


The House That Fear Built

by sarsaparillia



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-30 01:49:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 36,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarsaparillia/pseuds/sarsaparillia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where someone else found the twins that snowy night, Rin leads a demon army. — Rin/Shiemi.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. creed

**Author's Note:**

> Moving this fic, finally.

—

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The sky over the battlefield was bloodied red when she woke that evening. Shiemi sat up from her cot, aching all over. Another night of fighting. Another night of killing—and Shiemi didn’t care what the Vatican said, that was what this was; they were killing things with lives and loves and families in cold blood. Another night. Of course, Shiemi mostly stayed to the back ranks and the healer’s tents. It was safer there, and she was not a fighter.

Or at least, she used to be not a fighter.

That had been a long time ago.

“Izumo-chan!”

Izumo staggered in, skirt shredded and a gash up her thigh that five inches long, three inches deep, and gushing blood. She dragged Shima behind her—he seemed to be out cold.

“ _Izumo-chan_! What happened?!” Shiemi exclaimed.

Her arms went around her friend; Izumo felt fragile and stretched thin, shaking very slightly, and Shiemi was suddenly worried. It was not in the other girl’s nature to allow herself to be harmed to this degree.

“I—I’m okay,” Izumo panted. “Get off, I’m fine. Renzou’s the one who—he needs help. Fix it. I—I have to go back—Konekomaru and—and Bon are still—”

“Sit _down_ , Izumo-chan,” Shiemi ordered. “You’re bleeding.”

Izumo took deep breaths into her lungs. “What? No, I’m—”

Shiemi forced the dark-haired girl to sit on the cot. There was blood everywhere. “You are not fine. Sit there, and don’t move. Nii-chan, where are you?!”

The little green spirit appeared, giggling. Many things had changed since she’d first summoned Nii, Shiemi reflected quietly, but the sprite’s consistent good mood was not one of them. “Sancho-san, please.”

The plant appeared, thick with juice and healing properties. Shiemi stripped the spikes away, and pressed it to the gash. “This is going to hurt.”

Izumo hissed in reply as the plant began to work its magic.

“What happened to—?”

“He’s just knocked out,” Izumo muttered. “The idiot hit his head when he was trying to stop Bon from—from—”

“Being Bon,” Shiemi replied.

“Yes.”

The two girls looked at each other for a moment, tired. The both exhaled a sigh at the same time.

It had been such a long war.

Shiemi carefully checked Shima’s temperature. His heart rate was normal, and he seemed to be breathing alright. He was a little pale, but that was to be expected. “He seems… okay. If anything changes—”

“I know,” said Izumo. “Take him to the healers. Idiot. He is _such_ an _idiot_! Not that I care or anything, but, I mean, _look_ at him, he’s just so—”

Shiemi quietly slipped from the tent even as Izumo ranted at the still-unconscious Shima. She knew Izumo-chan, and she knew how worried the girl really was. Precious people were not to be left unattended. To Izumo, Shima was precious. Shiemi understood that.

The tent flap closed behind her, muffling the one-sided conversation from inside. Shiemi looked towards the horizon. The setting sun blazed red-gold, the last dying rays stretching through the sky, twisted golden roots of an ancient tree seeking sustenance. She stretched towards them; flower, root, weed, growing towards the sun.

There was a distant roar. Shiemi set her jaw.

The fighting had begun.

/ / /

Shiemi was running, dancing in and out of the lines of exorcists, Nii hiding under her hair. The ground was firm under her feet as she headed for the front lines.

She was a Tamer.

She could _do_ this.

“GET DOWN!” someone screamed, and all in hearing distance obeyed. Shiemi hit the ground, pressed her face into the dirt and whispered _please, Nii-chan, please, we need to save them_.

Nii-chan chirped in her ear.

Shiemi felt the ground rumble.

She smiled a little sadly.

The earth burst into the sky. Trees grew and grew, knotting up a forest in the middle of the field. It wouldn’t hold them back for long, Shiemi knew, but maybe—maybe long enough to deal with the injured—she needed a plan—

Hacking, wet coughs behind her. Shiemi whirled, and barely managed to catch the girl. There was a gaping hole in her stomach.

“Water,” she whispered. “Water. Please…”

Shiemi pushed her hair out of her face. “Nii-chan!”

The Greenman went about doing what it could, but Shiemi already knew the girl was a lost cause. “Let her sleep, Nii-chan.”

Nii looked at her with sad eyes. The pollen choked the air for a moment, lavender for sleep and chamomile for calm. Shiemi watched her lids flutter.

The girl slept.

Shiemi set her down. Her hands were soaked dark red and she fought not to vomit. Now was not the time to be weak. She thought of Izumo-chan and Shima, waiting in that little tent, both weak and bleeding and hoping that everyone came back alive.

What a miracle that would be.

The trees loomed over her, dark and safe. The sky was obscured, blocking out the dying sunlight and leaving her in darkness. The lack of light was unnerving, but it was better than nothing.

“Nii-chan, let me up there. I need to—”

Nii chirped again. A thick rope of bark shot out of the ground and surged upwards, growing faster than Shiemi could keep track of. She caught an outshoot, and let it drag her skywards, fingers locked around thick, dark bark.

They broke through the canopy, into a dazzling display of colours. Fuchsia and crimson, magenta and indigo, deep violet and brilliant gold painted the sky a masterpiece that would have taken Shiemi’s breath away had she had the time to concentrate on it. As it was, she looked out across the battlefield, strewn with broken trees and bodies.

She wouldn’t be able to keep holding the forest up for much longer. She could feel the drain on her stamina like an itch behind her eyelids. It wasn’t too bad, yet. She still had some time.

Shiemi stood on the branch of her tree and watched the sun sink below the horizon.

And the world was plunged into darkness.

There was a unanimous roar from the other side. The sound was followed by a surge in violence on the ground. The clang of claws against metal rang loud in Shiemi’s ears, and she winced. Somewhere deep inside, her quiet, sweet self still resided. In that deep, gentle place, the Shiemi she used to be—healer, naïve, good; fifteen and innocent—still existed.

And that Shiemi didn’t like violence.

Eighteen-year-old Shiemi liked violence little more than fifteen-year-old Shiemi had.

The difference was, eighteen-year-old Shiemi wasn’t afraid to end a demon’s life if she needed to. Eighteen-year-old Shiemi wasn’t scared of the dark. Eighteen-year-old Shiemi could build herself a forest without even thinking about.

Eighteen-year-old Shiemi wasn’t _afraid_.

“Yow,” said a voice. “So this is you, huh?”

Shiemi whipped her head around, searching for the sound of the voice.

“Up here,” it—he?—said again.

She looked up into open air.

A man in a brown uniform slouched there, floating. His hair was black and he was almost grinning, a darkly tufted tail furling and unfurling around him. His ears were long ad pierced through with silver.

But it was his eyes that terrified Shiemi.

Electric blue. Demon blue.

Satan’s blue.

Shiemi looked at him through her bangs. Her hair was so pale in the last remnants of the daylight. “Who are you?”

He chuckled. It was like ice down her back and Shiemi shuddered.

“Just a guy,” he said. “And I know who _you_ are, Miss Exorcist. They call you _witch_ , don’t they? The forest witch.”

Shiemi’s stared at him impassively. The words called up a long-festering wound. She was ten, and the children screamed. Witch! Burn the witch! She was thirteen, her grandmother smiling and the world splintering. Witch! Burn the witch! She was fifteen, roots growing up her legs. Witch! Burn the witch!

“Does it matter what they call me?” Shiemi asked.

“Nah,” he said. He studied her. “You’re too cute to be a witch.”

Shiemi coloured high in her cheeks. It was an uncontrollable reaction, left over from a time when any compliment she had ever received was stashed away and cherished. But the blush soured into a concerned look.

“I feel like I should be trying to kill you,” Shiemi murmured.

“You probably should be,” he agreed. “But, y’see, the thing is that I don’t die so easy.”

He flickered out of existence for a moment, and Shiemi held the piece of paper that kept Nii-chan alive tight in her fist. There were other papers, too, tucked into her pockets and her breast-band that she might grab at in the case of an emergency—and this seemed to be qualifying. But just as she was reaching—

“Oi, quit that. You might actually hurt me. That wouldn’t be nice.”

There was a flare of heat. The paper in her grip turned to ash, burned to nothing with blue flames. Nii disappeared in a puff of smoke. The forest withered.

And Shiemi was falling.

“Got’cha,” he grinned.

She looked up into blue eyes with red pupils. His skin was warm against hers and she struggled not to squirm; she wanted to crawl out of her skin because _this felt wrong_. “Who _are_ you?”

“Just a guy. I told you that,” he murmured in her ear.

“It would be nice to know the name of my killer,” Shiemi murmured in reply.

He actually laughed. There was something about it that sent chills down Shiemi’s spine, and, tucked up in his arms and floating high above the rest of the world as they were, all she wanted to do was fall.

“Not going to kill you, little witch. You’re _far_ too interesting for that.”

Shiemi took a deep breath in, preparing herself to argue. She didn’t know his name, she didn’t want to know his name, because there was still something wild and terrifying in him. It was something uncontrollable and strong and beautiful.

It chilled her to the very bone.

He pulled her closer, brushed his mouth along her throat.

Shiemi thought of Izumo-chan and Shima in the little tent and realized that she was probably never going to see them again. She was so sorry that she hadn’t said goodbye. She was so sorry. So sorry.

The demon’s mouth pressed to her ear. “Hush,” he said.

So sorry.

“My name,” he murmured, “is Rin.”

Shiemi closed her eyes, and tried not to think.

—

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.

 _tbc_.


	2. D-Evil

—

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There was pain.

It was never-ending, Shiemi thought with her eyes clenched tight. It meant that she was still alive, but did it _really_ have to invade her dreams? Demon princes and flower petals swirled behind her eyelids, a memory of girlhood and bloodlust, smeared together to keep out reality.

She was going to open her eyes and see the tent ceiling, khaki green and sloping down to the soil. She was going to open her eyes, and the previous night was going to be a dream. She was going to open her eyes and wait for Izumo-chan to stumble in, bleeding and shaking like every other every evening.

It would all be a dream, and Shiemi would never again take her freedom for granted.

Her lids flickered open.

She was in a world of filmy cream curtains, white pillows, and light glinting off dull gold bars. A gilded cage for a dirty princess in new clothes, Shiemi was trapped in ruffles and lace and fresh-picked flowers woven into her hair.

She could have sworn that it had been a dream.

There was very little light. It was soft and came from somewhere outside of the gauzy screen. Shiemi rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

"I never got your name."

There was absolute quiet.

Shiemi rose to her knees and—hating herself, hating him, hating everything—crawled to the bars to push the curtains out of the way to see the speaker. Her knees cracked and popped, tensing just slightly. She remembered the feeling from far away, from when she was fifteen and the unknown Exorcist had stood over her and destroyed the plant that was keeping her from standing.

She'd sworn that day to never live on her knees again.

(It was always better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Shiemi knew that better than anyone.)

And now in a golden cage for a beautiful songbird, she looked through cream silk out at her captor. She tilted her head—his back was facing the light, and his face was shadowed. It was hard to make his features out.

She should have been angry.

She should have been ranting and raving and screaming, furious enough to make herself bleed to break out of this pathetic cage. Had she been Izumo-chan or Shura-sensei, she wouldn't have even been in this position. If she had been anyone else, she would have already escaped.

But she wasn't anyone else.

She was just Shiemi.

And Shiemi was tired, not angry. She was so tired and so sorry; she was not made for a war. She looked at his dark form through the bars. She was so tired. She dipped her head down and concentrated on her bangs. She counted the blonde strands, two by two by two.

"Oi. Witch-girl. I'm talking to you."

Shiemi refused to acknowledge him.

There was a frown in his voice. "I could kill you."

"You could," Shiemi murmured. She shook her head; her gaze was still trained on her hair. "But you won't."

"What makes you so sure?" he asked.

"I'm still alive right now, aren't I? If you were going to kill me, you would have already done it." Shiemi reasoned.

Soft snickering, from somewhere that was not the man in front of her. Shiemi refused to raise her head to find its source, but— "She has you there, Brother."

"Go away, Yukio," he said, mildly. There were no bite in the words—it seemed it was more out of habit, than anything else. Shiemi chanced a flicker of blue eyes upwards just as another body moved into her sphere of influence.

There was enough light to see this person properly, Shiemi thought. He looked more human than—than—she refused to think his name. There was family resemblance, she thought. Just a little. The hair was more brown than black, and the eyes were a slightly darker blue. His gaze was calm and cool, scientific in a way that frightened her. He watched her as one might watch a chemical experiment; with a mild sense of interest and no sense of care. He looked only for results.

And she knew then that this person wore a different brand of sadism than her captor did. This person would dissect her, cut her up and study her from the inside out. No anesthetic, no pretense.

Shiemi shrank away from him.

"Aw, look, see, you scared her!" he laughed. "I don't think she likes you so much, Yuki. Maybe you should just leave."

Yukio scoffed low in his throat and shook his head. "Your obsession with these—" he paused to push his glasses up his nose "— _creatures_ —is going to be the death of you. I'll not have it."

He threw back his head and laughed, low and full-bellied. A dark little thrill went up Shiemi's spine as the light spilled down his face, dusty and white-blue across his eyes. There was a wild look in his gaze, and every bit of sense Shiemi had told her to skitter away from him; to get back to the bars at the other side of the cage and hide forever.

But she stayed where she was with her knees tucked underneath her body, frozen in place by the laugh on his face. It was the stink of blood and crushed veneer; induced fear in her stomach and she couldn't move.

Shiemi finally looked up.

Yukio had gone.

He was still staring down at her, curious.

"So am I gonna get your name, or what?" he asked. He was tilted towards the light. Shadows danced along his skin, settling in to the hollows; his eyes, his nose, the base of his throat all sang of darkness and lust.

"No," Shiemi replied.

"Huh," he chuckled. "Didn't think so. Maybe tomorrow."

She did not voice her negative. He would not know her name if it killed her. She watched him turn. He was leaving.

"Wait!"

The word tore itself from her lips without her permission.

He swung around to look at her—her in her gilded cage; rare and precious and so very trapped—and said " _Yes_?"

"Where are you going?"

A strange grin lit his face. It was manic, bloodlust, psychosis running rampant. His hand slid through the gold bars to brush along her cheek.

"I'm going out to end this war with my bare claws, little witch. Maybe next time, I'll let you come with me," he murmured. His thumb ran along her bottom lip.

The fear that seized Shiemi was all-consuming.

He grinned down at her. His canines were long and sharp, glimmering dully in the dull light as he spoke. "You _are_ an interesting little witch, aren't you? So scared and so determined not to show it. My brothers would hate you."

Shiemi didn't dignify this with a response. She didn't move, didn't blink, didn't breathe. For a moment longer, he touched her face.

And then he withdrew.

"Rin," he said. "Remember that."

She didn't hear the door close behind him.

Shiemi was left in solitude, kneeling, a princess of silence. She stared through the bars up at the little hole in the wall. She thought of sunshine and pale green shoots pushing up through the dirt to reach it. They were so free.

And she wasn't. She was trapped in a lovely cage for a lovely girl, and there was nothing she could do to escape it.

The Amahara garden was out of reach.

And then the tears came.

/ / /

For a long time, Shiemi simply lay there. She'd looked for the door but found none. There was no lock; if there was no lock, how could there be a key? There was nothing but golden bars and golden floor and golden ceiling, seamlessly melded into each other.

Shiemi lay on her back and drew patterns in the shadows that brushed along the ceiling. She thought of the balls in Rome at Christmas and Easter every year, when Izumo-chan had found ways to sneak Paku-chan in, and the indecent dresses she's been talked into wearing. Cut low in front and even lower in the back, they'd been meant to attract attention. Three lovely Asian girls, exotic colouring and exotic features, dancing in the middle of the floor.

Those nights had been all glitz and glimmer; magic of a sort that Shiemi had never known. The first Christmas still shone in her memory—she'd never had friends before then to celebrate with.

At that point, Izumo-chan still fluctuated between harsh and those odd moments of sweet, awkward, blushing denial.

Of course, Izumo-chan was _still_ like that.

At that moment, a longing for her best friend hit Shiemi in the stomach. It was violent and raw; missing someone was hard. And she did miss Izumo-chan, and Bon, and Shima, and Konekomaru, and even rude Takara; she even missed Shura-sensei's constant boozing. They were her class and her friends—family, really, had been for three years—for God's sake.

And for all she knew, they could have been dead.

The knot in her gut twisted tighter.

Time passed.

Shiemi wasn't sure how much. She was both more exhausted and yet more lucid than she'd been in a long time, wasting away in the awake-but-dreaming state that she'd fallen into to pass the time.

"Are you awake?"

"Huh?"

"You haven't moved for half an hour. I've been watching. You're pretty interesting, little witch."

"I'm bored."

"Sorry."

But Shiemi thought that he wasn't sorry at all. She concentrated on the ceiling. "How long am I going to stay here?"

"Until I get bored," he said. A wicked grin crossed his face, eyes lighting up blue and crazy. "Do I get to know your name, yet?"

"No," she told him. "You don't."

He studied her for a long moment. He watched her the way she used to watch wild animals—carefully debating to see which way the animal would jump, and whether it was better to let the thing go or try to domesticate it. "Why not?"

Shiemi tipped her head. "It's the principle of the thing."

"Hah!" he laughed.

"What?" she asked, blinking.

"You still think about principles."

"Why wouldn't I?" she asked him. She didn't know why she was talking to him. Shiemi stretched her legs. Her thigh high socks had slipped down to pool loosely around her ankles. She still remembered the first time she'd ever put them on—she'd blushed so furiously, and Paku-chan had laughed and laugh.

Shiemi rolled them off to crack her toes.

He was silent for a moment. "I could rip it out of you."

"Pardon?"

"Your name."

For the first time that day, Shiemi smiled. "You could. That would be a little messy, though, I think."

He snorted and shook his head. The silver through his ears flashed. "Yukio would clean it up. Fucker loves fixing messes."

And Shiemi wondered how she looked to him, a reckless mess of stolen girl. There was probably still dirt smudged across her face. There were probably sticks in her hair.

She sighed.

It didn't even matter.

He stared at her, curious. "Do that again."

"What?"

But his hand shot through the bars to press into the soft flesh where her jaw met her throat. She swallowed reflexively. His claws were long and sharp, digging into her skin very slightly. A pin-prick of pain, and the metallic tang of blood was in the air, thickening with every second.

Shiemi hated that scent.

It made her think of death and dead girls with holes in their stomachs, wanting nothing more than water and forever-sleep. It made her think of red skies and blood soaking into the dirt, turning everything to muck.

It made her want to vomit.

She would have pulled away from him to wipe it off, but his hand curled around the back of her neck to pull her forward. Firm in the possessive; he pulled her up against the golden bars with her throat exposed.

"I—" she murmured.

"This won't hurt," he muttered.

He pressed his mouth to the tiny wound.

Shiemi stayed stock still.

It was uncomfortable and the fear swirled in her stomach. She had not forgotten where she was; she had not forgotten who she was. She did not have the luxury of forgetting. This person was dangerous—even with his mouth imploring at her throat, he was so, so dangerous.

"That should heal up," he rasped into the crook of her neck.

She nodded with metal against her skin.

He dropped her like a heated brand and jerked back, grinning widely. "You're never gonna forget me. You know that, right?"

She could have nodded again. She didn't.

When she looked up, he had gone.

The cut on her throat was closed.

Shiemi pressed her face between the golden bars, and murmured his name.

"Rin," she whispered the hated name to herself. "Rin, Rin, Rin."

Over and over, again and again. The anger bubbled up in her throat so that she couldn't breathe, but she counted the seconds with his name, over and over and over until she thought nothing else, felt nothing else. It was a sick occupation, one that grew like a weed.

She whispered his name to herself when no one was looking because there was nothing else to do. Over and over. Again and again.

"Rin, Rin, Rin."

Like a mantra.

Like a prayer.

—

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 _tbc_.


	3. movement x

—

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Shiemi dreamed.

Of foxes and flutes and champagne in a void of merciless blue eyes, she dreamed of blue earth, blue sky, and blue flames burning the whole world to ash. She dreamed she sat in a clearing surrounded by black trees with blue leaves and blue veins, and a pool of blue water in the middle. The wind whispered past her, tossing her hair around her face in a cloud of white-gold so different from the realm around her. She dreamed she looked up and up, stretching her hands towards the atmosphere, and then—

She woke to lace and satin beneath her hands.

She was out of touch, unaware of herself. Everything felt a bit surreal. She stared at the golden ceiling with glazed eyes, unsure of what she was supposed to do next. Her stomach made a disparaging noise—when had she last eaten?

"Hello?" she asked out loud, softly. "Is anyone there?"

"I am here, witchling."

"Witchling?" Shiemi asked. She vaguely recognized the voice; it was male, and just a smidge deeper than Rin's.

"Witchling," Yukio confirmed. "As you seem unwilling to tell my dear brother your name, I find it supremely unlikely that you will tell me. I must address you with something. You are a small witch. Thus, witchling."

There was abrupt sort of logic to it, Shiemi thought. He spoke in a clipped voice, forced sound bites, but Shiemi had a sneaking suspicion that should he want, his voice would flow like honey.

The thought did not give her comfort.

"What do you require?" he asked.

Shiemi blushed dark red. She hated being this weak—and again, she thought that if she had been anyone else, she would have been out of this situation. "I'm hungry. And I need to—"

She gestured helplessly down at her dirty clothes.

Light glinted off his glasses, rendering his eyes invisible. He studied her for a moment.

It was a very different sort of studying, Shiemi thought. Rin studied her with all the curiosity of an affectionate cat. Rin studied her with his hands and his mouth (and here, she had to fight off a flush and forcefully keep her hands from rising to her throat), his senses; Rin's was an active study. Yukio's study was, by far, more passive; less invasive physically.

But the fact that she was unable to see his eyes was a chilling lesson in the rules of this new world she had somehow fallen into. Yukio would slice her to pieces just to watch as her heart stopped beating if he thought he would learn something from it. Of this, Shiemi had no doubt.

She trusted neither of them, but she knew in her bones that Rin would not kill her if given the chance. On the converse, she knew the exact opposite was true of Yukio.

If given the chance, he would tear her to pieces.

But it seemed that Rin's strange musings were enough, at that moment, to keep her alive.

Yukio walked to the cage and raised his hand.

The bars melted away as if they had never been. He looked at her and crooked two fingers in the universal gesture for forward movement.

"Come," he said, simply.

Shiemi stepped off the golden platform. Her ankle rolled beneath her, unsteady on legs that were two-days weak, and she winced. Not even two days, and her legs were already regressing. She searched for her balance, lost like her sanity and maybe her mind, and found it hiding in the dregs of lace and linen that were her dreams. She stood, and walked.

He led her into the darkness.

Shiemi couldn't see a thing. The gloom was impenetrable, curling behind her eyeballs and sinking into her brain like a parasite. The fear ate away at the base of her spine, singing along nerve endings and oh, what she wouldn't have given to have had Nii-chan with her, then. Even the thought of the little Greenman spirit calmed her some, but she couldn't _see_ where she was walking.

She followed the sound of Rin's brother's footsteps. They were soft and almost non-existent, and she strained to hear them over the sound of her own breathing.

She followed the sound of the footsteps because she had no other choice.

"Stop."

It was a command, in the voice of someone who was never, under any circumstance, disobeyed. Shiemi froze. Fingers on her chin jerked her head to the side; he forcefully shifted her gaze to the shadowy wall. It was cold, cruel, impersonal, and impossible graceful.

"What do you see?" Yukio murmured in her ear. His voice was like black silk.

"Nothing," Shiemi whispered. It took all of her willpower not to cringe away from him when he laughed softly and darkly.

"Still so human, witchling. There is a door. Open it."

And yet, Shiemi didn't move. She looked down at her hands. They were pale murky blurs, shaking with the restrained urge to curl in on themselves in the dark. She didn't know what to do.

"Go. Now."

Steel, now, instead of silk. Black steel, primed at her throat. Prepared to cut in deep and leave her bleeding—and this was the result of a war. Prisoner, princess, girl in a golden cage.

Shiemi had to remember that, or she was very liable to be dead by morning.

She stretched out a hand.

Solid obsidian met her fingers, cool, seamless, perfect. She pushed hard, once, knuckles white and knobbly. The door cracked down the middle and a single, unblemished line of white light broke through.

Shiemi staggered towards it without further prodding. Yukio was gone.

She tumbled into the bright light.

Consumed, encouraged, comforted.

/ / /

It was a white room.

Perfectly empty and perfectly clean, it was entirely white marble. The walls were mirrors. The image of her own face doubled, doubled, doubled again flashed back at her, pale and scared. The shadows beneath her eyes were deep. Hunted.

Shiemi looked at her toes, and shuddered.

The floor sank in the middle of the room into a square pool half as deep as Shiemi was tall. The water inside it was clear and calm. She knelt by the pool and dipped her hand in. Cool. Warm enough that she could have plunged in head first, lost herself in it, but cool.

She had nothing left to lose anyway.

She fell forwards, and submerged.

Dirt and blood came off of her in layers. Shiemi opened her eyes underwater, hair floating tendrils of shining gold around her face. Her clothes dragged her down and she sat at the bottom of the pool and looked up. It was a peace sort of interlude; she could feel the knotted tension slowly leaving her body.

She shot up for air.

There was soap, a thick towel, and a folded kimono sitting at the edge of the pool where there had been nothing before. Shiemi's breath caught in her throat, terror surging up. She forced it down and away. She was not afraid.

"Is anyone there?" she called out. She ignored the tremble in her voice. She was not afraid. She was _not afraid_.

But there was no answer.

Shiemi sighed out loud.

There was nothing for it. Shiemi stripped off her soggy, shredded clothing and wadded across the pool to carefully deposit them where they wouldn't soak the cloth she would be wearing. She looked at the mess for a moment. They were her school clothes, the last link she had to Cross Academy, and—and this was probably the last time she should see them. She shook her head, and turned away.

Getting clean was more important that nostalgia, at this point. Then she grappled with the soap and went to work cleaning off the filth that water alone couldn't take away.

It was not an easy task.

She realized that there was grime on her body in places that she did not know existed. There was blood crusted underneath her fingernails, ring-marks around her ankles and up her calves where sweat and dirt had caked on her skin, scraps on her knees, and even muck smeared into her elbows.

Shiemi scrubbed her skin until it was raw and violently red. She was a patch of colour and vibrance in the white room where none had before existed; she was flaw, imperfection, life.

She shivered when she realized that though she had washed so much dirt off, the water around her remained entirely clear.

She reached for the towel, scrabbling at the marble floor as she got out, and wrapped it around herself. With her hair up, she stood and dripped dry. It had been a very long time since she'd worn a proper kimono and she stared down at it, unsure.

She touched the thick silk and then—

childhood, learning how to tie the obi, fingers fumbling and her mother laughing in the background as her grandmother showed her again and again. Childhood, tucking flowers into the creases in the fabric, into her hair, building up bouquets and bouquets of purple-green-golden-orange for her grandmother's approval. Childhood, practising over and over the familiar pattern, knotting the bow to perfection under her grandmother's watchful gaze.

—smiled.

She slipped the fabric over her shoulders and felt like bird bones, hollow on the inside and light. Breakable. She tied the obi without even looking; the motions were ingrained and probably always would be. And after, she stood up straight with empty eyes, and waited. Her stomach growled again, a whine that make Shiemi grit her teeth. She pressed her fingers to her abdomen, trying to force the hunger away.

Nothing worked.

And then the glass wall split and pushed outward, and Rin stood in the doorway, grinning with his teeth.

"Hey, you hungry?"

Shiemi stared at him. "Yes," she said.

"Figured. C'mon, let's find something to eat," he said. He was at her side in an instant, fingers closing around her wrist and tugging her forward. The movement was jerky and Shiemi stumbled into him.

Shiemi coloured dully. She seemed to be doing that a lot.

"Got'cha," said Rin. He grinned, mischievous. But behind it, Shiemi could see the lack of thought—the bloodlust in his eyes was thick and dark, gritty and wanting.

And she thought, then, that he was the most dangerous kind of predator if only because he _was_ a predator; but there was humanity in him, too, and humanity's cruel way of toying with the world. He held the world on a string, swinging back and forth and batting the whole like a curious cat.

He smiled at her slowly. It was playful and vulgar, adagio violin in the dark and red, violent red pupils in eyes of blue. Dangerous.

"Coming?" he asked.

Shiemi gulped.

She was in over her head.

And she thought that Rin knew it, too. His fingers brushed her cheek, light and soft like feathers across her eyes, smearing curse words and sin into her skin. She could feel it sinking in, tainting, changing all that it touched.

She didn't cringe away.

He took her by the hand and pulled her from the mirror-room. She walked a half-step behind him, kept her eyes down, and watched her bare feet as she walked. She felt small and fragile and very, very young; eighteen summers was the entire scope of her existence, and she'd always felt older than her years, and yet… walking in this dark place with her fingers laced through an enemy's, she felt she knew nothing of the world. She felt like she hadn't smiled in forever.

Shiemi missed smiling.

Her hair, still damp, curled around her ears. Droplets of water soaked the neckline of her kimono. She missed smiling, and the sun, and Izumo-chan. She missed the ocean, the smell of salt, and she missed gardening. She missed flowers.

She missed so many things.

Shiemi struggled not to cry.

Her free hand clenched at her elbow. She wanted to draw into herself, hide and pretend that it was all a dream, all a dream, all a dream—

But Shiemi was not that naïve.

"Hey, you okay?"

He almost sounded concerned.

Shiemi nodded.

He cocked his head and stared at her silently for a moment or two. He seemed to contemplate her, her with her ice-blue kimono and bare feet, ragged breaths and bitten-down nails.

"How hungry are you?" he queried.

"Sort of, I guess," Shiemi replied, cautious as a dove.

This seemed to be the right answer. He grinned widely and asked "Can I show you something first?"

He didn't wait for her to answer.

His arms caught around her waist, and they were moving so fast that the dark hall became a blur of cold black air around her. Shiemi could barely breathe, sucking on empty lungs and trying, trying to breathe, but just falling short—

They broke out in the hazy, grey hours just before dawn. Rin crowed laughter with his head thrown back (and just for a moment, Shiemi thought of a little boy who never grew up, singing _oh, the cleverness of me_ —), and set her down on a warm platform of blue fire, cradled her safely above the carnage of the world below them.

And Shiemi, horrified and sick, watched the world burn.

The screams echoed long and chilling, though from which side they belonged, she could not tell. The ground was red and cracked, soaked through with either rain or blood, or maybe both. Probably both.

Shiemi's stomach rolled.

"See? It'll all be over, little witch. Everything'll be done," he said. "Won't hurt anymore."

"It already does," Shiemi whispered.

The words carried on the breeze, shimmering with promise. She turned in her cage of fire—gold—words, always words. "Would you let me go home if I said please?"

"No," he said.

"Why not?" Shiemi asked.

He stared at her. His tail whipped around them both, curled around her wrist, and dragged her inches closer. "You're _interesting_."

"I don't want to be interesting."

"I said _no_ , little witch."

And there it was, Shiemi thought, out in the open. He didn't want her, but he didn't want anyone else to have her, either. Maybe it was all a game, to him, but there were lives hanging in the balance of this war, and demons and humans and everyone—just—just everyone.

Shiemi would have said of a lot of things, then. But she was so angry and ill with the whole thing that she couldn't even think.

"I don't like you," she said simply.

His eyes flashed blue and true, fire and possession and laughing rage. "You don't have to like me, little witch."

Shiemi stood on her platform with the wind in her hair, just as trapped as she'd been before he brought her out into the morning. She looked at him—just looked.

Brown uniform, black hair, blue eyes.

And a wide, manic grin.

Shiemi's heart sunk like lead in an ocean of tears. He was right. It was all going to end.

Only she wasn't going to end with it, and that was the problem. And right then, the muscles in her face worked. They pulled up, her cheeks turning pink with courage. She had nothing— _nothing_ —to lose. _Nothing_.

Shiemi smiled.

(What was her life, in the face of a smile? They say there's another name for nothing left to lose. They call it _freedom_.)

"There you go," he said. "Not so bad."

"No," Shiemi murmured. "No, it is that bad."

Rin blinked at her.

And then he threw his head back a second time and laughed and laughed and laughed. "Hell's bells, you're a _strange_ one, little witch!"

"Yes," Shiemi said, still smiling so hard her cheeks hurt. "Maybe I am."

/ / /

On the ground, a woman with hair like fire looked up and up. She held the gash in her stomach closed, hissing spite and venom as she waited for the sun's first rays to break over the treetops.

Up high, murky through the clouds, was a girl with blonde hair.

The woman's eyes went wide.

Shiemi.

Shiemi was alive.

The sun broke the horizon. There was a screeching _kreeee_ — _eee_ as the morning light wiped away the last of the demons. She watched the place where the girl had been, not moments before.

And then Shura, rife with mental exhaustion, proceeded to quietly pass out, face down in the dirt.

—

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.

 _tbc_.


	4. st-RING

—

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"Yeh don' get it, do ya _?_!"

The council at the Vatican did not seem impressed. Shura stood in front of them with her hands on her hips, raging. Alive with fire and fight, she did not look like she'd only been patched up only hours before.

The demon blood in her veins (half-blood child, what are you doing here? This world is not meant for you) was already well on its way to sewing the holes in her body shut, and she would be seamless and perfect once again. Like a doll, a figurine, a dancer on display.

"The safety of all is more important than the safety of one," they thundered.

Shura stared up at the Vatican council. They all shook their heads in a smooth movement, all at once, in perfect unison.

She would have no help from them.

"Fine," Shura said. " _Fine_. But when yer all dead, don' say I di'n't tell ya so."

The silence that followed her statement was long and cold.

Shura shook her head, chuckling softly. "Ya don' even know what yer getting' yerselves in to. Well, I'm done. _Done_."

She wheeled and strode to the door, temper flaring. (She didn't stomp, because only girls in movies did that, and Shura was _not_ that kind of woman.) The anger seethed under her skin, and it took all of her will not to turn around and slaughter them all.

She shoved through the door, and didn't even look back.

For good measure, she slammed it behind her.

The magicked hallways of True Cross Academy were empty and oppressive around her. Shura took a slow breath, trying to let the anger out through her nose; trying not to rush back in there and shred them all, a bloodbath in the making. For a long moment she stood there with her back to the door, lost in a happy daydream where the Vatican were all screaming for mercy.

The imagined violence was enough to calm the boiling in her blood. Shura took another breath, and then another, and regained control of herself.

There was nothing for it.

She was going to have to fight this war herself.

Shura tossed her hair over her shoulder and pulled the still-rattled pieces of her psyche back together. Well, if it was a war they wanted, then it was a war they would get. The Vatican would probably be obliterated—and a dark, long-supressed part of her mind screeched joy and hatred—and she was determined not to care.

She didn't believe in God. She didn't pray.

She was in this on her own.

Shura set her jaw, and went to find her students.

It wasn't a long walk. The door to the war-zone was three feet away. She wasted no time; she marched through the doorframe, slammed it behind her, and found herself surrounded by red sky, red earth, red carnage. She took a deep breath. The air stung at the back of her throat, acrid and rotting with the combined scents of decaying flesh and decaying hopes.

Shura looked towards the sunrise, and smiled.

The little tent where her once-students spent their days was quiet. Shura was sure they were mourning in their own, quiet ways—sending off their dead and their illusions.

Her silly students.

Shura pushed the tent-flap aside with one hand and stepped in. She cocked her hip out and settled her hand there, bored and good-humoured. She looked around at them all, smirking. "Well, well. Don' ya'll look cozy."

Four heads whipped in her direction (the fifth head did not seem interested, but that was nothing new). There was a loud "Shura-sensei!" and she laughed as they all stared at her.

It was a bitter laugh, maybe, but it was a laugh.

And that was what counted.

She tipped her head at them, still smirking. "So I found som'in interesting out. Moriyama is still alive."

Shura could feel Izumo's gaze burning on her face. Ah, fighting for a friendship, she thought. It would never go out of style.

"So?" asked a voice in the back of the room.

The Exorcists turned to glare furiously at Takara. He didn't seem to mind.

"So we're gonna go find her, kid. If she's still alive, she's still one of you, an' you protect your own. I thought I'd taught ya better than that by now," Shura told him cooly. She'd never liked the rude, puppet-carrying boy. Regardless of the fact that he was strong—and he was, Shura grudgingly admitted, he was very strong—he was still sort of creepy.

Izumo stared at her. "When do we start?" she demanded. "That stupid idiot probably is hurt somewhere, and knowing her, she's doing all sorts of stupid idiot things like the total stupid idiot she is—"

Shura would have laughed again had she known that Izumo was not so serious.

"Now," she said. "Get gone. Hunt. Be back here before dark. We got a lotta shit to get through tonight, an' I don' want any of ya dead on my watch. Be careful."

They nodded. Izumo had already wheeled, pulling out the slips of paper that called her Byakko, and headed past Shura without another glance. The others filled out after the dark-haired girl, each boy nodding as he went.

Shura smiled at them fondly in turn.

When they had disappeared out of the tent flap, and the only sound was the cautious chirping of the birds from outside, Shura took a deep breath and collapsed on one of the beds. She was so tired.

A minute later, she was asleep.

/ / /

Shiemi's knees knocked together. The cold sank into her bones and skated along her nerves, sending shivers up and down her spine.

She sat in her golden cage with her legs swinging back and forth over the edge, hanging an inch or so above the floor. She felt like an angry child, sitting all alone in a black room, waiting for someone to come and make her feel better.

But there was only her humming softly for sound and Rin's breathing that made it through the darkness. He slouched against the closest golden pillar tracing patterns in the floor.

Her cheeks still hurt.

Everything still hurt.

"What do you believe in?"

Shiemi looked down at him, wondering. He always asked questions like that—questions that other people found too personal or too rude. He asked them like they meant nothing, and sometimes—most of the time—she had no idea how to respond. She paused to think about it.

"My friends," she said slowly. "I believe in my friends."

"What else?" he asked, tilting his head.

"Why are you interested?"

"Because you still haven't told me your name, little witch," he laughed.

Shiemi shook her head. "That's a silly reason to ask what I believe in."

His shirt rustled as he shrugged his shoulders up and down; the brown fabric was rough against Shiemi's leg. "It's still a reason."

"That's true," Shiemi murmured. She tipped her head back, her hair brushed along her collarbones, sending shocks of feeling through her body. She hadn't really felt anything since she'd been—what was the word—swept away? No—spirited away? No—kidnapped, that was the world she was looking for. Kidnapped.

(Nothing good, anyway.)

She could feel him staring at her, intense and curious, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of returning the look. Shiemi didn't understand what he'd found in her that was so utterly compelling, but it must have been something—

"You never answered my question," he said. He nudged her leg a little to catch her attention, and a thrill went down Shiemi's spine (though from fear or disgust or something else, she couldn't tell. Things were beginning to get blurry).

"Oh! Um," said Shiemi. She bit her lip, chewing over it in thought. Did she want to get into this with him?

"Oi," he mumbled, "stop that, you're gonna hurt yourself." He reached over and pressed cold fingers to her lips.

Shiemi turned dark red. He had absolutely no concept of personal space. She pushed him away, tempted to hide her face in a pillow or maybe just bite him if he came so close again (it seemed like a good idea at the time).

"Don't—don't do that."

Rin pulled back, looking a little bit haunted. His eyes had gone dark, dark blue; crackling fire and something else that Shiemi didn't have a name for—something that looked to swallow her whole if she wasn't careful. It wasn't the first time she'd felt like that, nor, she knew, was it likely to be the last. She shivered—she was always shivering in this cursed place, from cold or fear or—or whatever this was—

"You two look cozy," came the deadpan expression from far away.

Chills crept down Shiemi's spine and she cringed away from Rin, drawing her legs up off the floor and back into her prison. Her prison was safe. Nothing could get to her in her prison (and wasn't that an ironic thing, she thought bitterly); not the bugs, not the nightmares, and certainly not Yukio.

Yukio gave her the creeps.

She ducked her head down, and looked up through her lashes. Rin was grinning. He'd jumped up at the sound of his twin's voice, swinging around to flip him the bird and yet manage to hover in front of her. Shiemi was quietly grateful for Rin's inability to share at that moment.

"And you look ugly. Sup, Yuki?"

Yukio stared boredly between them, in a white lab coat stained with something dark purple that Shiemi didn't want to know about. He crossed his arms, pushed his glasses up his nose and surveyed them with a cold, clinical look that had her wanting to skid back. He looked between them and a slow dark smile spread across his face.

"Our dear elder sibling wants a look at your newest toy, Brother."

"No," Rin said, voice sharp. " _No_ , Yuki."

"Take it up with Amaimon," Yukio chuckled. He stared between them. He was going to take amusement from it. Violently, viciously.

"I said _no_ , Yukio. _Fuck_ no," Rin's voice degenerated into a snarl. Shiemi watched the blue fire play around his hands, skating along his nerves and sparking up in bursts of blue-white fireworks, the look in his eyes wild and furious. There was anger and well-masked terror in his face. She wondered what had him so afraid.

Yukio raised an eyebrow. "Scared, Brother?"

" _Never_. I said _no_ ," he snarled again.

"No, what? Are you frightened he'll want to play with her himself?"

Rin stood in front of Shiemi, blocked her from view. The fire burned and lengthened into a saber of flames; she could feel the heat and the rage rolling off of him in waves.

"I'll kill him first," Rin roared.

Yukio simply snickered. His glasses flickered whitely in the light. His smile didn't disappear. Shiemi poked her head around Rin's fiery torso, and watched him turn and shrug. It was nonchalant and disgusting.

"I'll leave you alone, then," he said.

Shiemi was revolted.

(That was not family. There was _no way_ that that was family.)

Rin was staring at the floor.

"Is he gone?" he whispered, voice hoarse.

"Yes," Shiemi said.

"You shouldn't have—seen that," he muttered.

"It's okay," Shiemi murmured. "Really."

"It's not."

It was with shaking fingers that Shiemi reached out and caught his arm. She carefully pulled, tugging him down to sit on the edge of her cage. He was trembling.

She wondered if maybe he was just as scared as she was.

Shiemi very gently began to pry his palms apart. His claws had dug into his skin, leaving angry, red gouges there. She frowned down at them.

"If I had Nii-chan, I could make these go away…"

He chuckled morosely. "They'll be fine in a sec."

And it was true. Shiemi watched the bleeding crescents close, turning pink then white then disappearing entirely, as if they'd never been there at all. She blinked up at him.

"Demon healing," he said with a shrug.

She sat there with her hands curled around his, trying to rationalize everything that had just happened—maybe she was trying to rationalize everything that had happened in the past three days. She still didn't know anything, was still trapped, kidnapped, but—

But maybe it was a good thing.

"Still," Shiemi said. "Be careful, okay?"

"Yeah."

They both fell silent. Shiemi pulled her hand back.

"'M sorry," he said after a long, long time.

"It's okay," Shiemi said. "It's okay."

They sat together on the verge of her golden prison, and, quiet, said nothing.

And then the ground began to shake beneath them.

Shiemi's eyes went wide.

"Wh-what? What's going—on _?_!" she got out, clutching the edge with white knuckles. She looked around, frantic to find the source of the shaking, but the darkness was impenetrable. Her frame vibrated.

The floor cracked open.

Shiemi was falling, dropping down into a gaping maw, cragged deep and dark.

She screamed—

Blue fire caught her and yanked her up, seething into a fiery orb around her. She clamped her hands over her mouth, forcing the sound to silence. She searched for Rin as the room fell the pieces around them.

When she found him, all traces of his humanity were gone.

"I'll kill you. I'll fuckin' kill you—" he snarled, eyes bulging, "—an' rip you to fuckin' shreds an' _I'll fuckin' KILL YOU, AMAIMON_!"

"So this is her, little brother? She looks sort of boring."

" _WHERE ARE YOU?_!" Rin roared.

"Hi."

She looked to her left. A boy—he looked younger than she was, with green hair. Shiemi stared suspiciously—sat next to her. He was staring at her very intently, and she instinctually recoiled. He was sort of eerie.

"You do look sort of boring. Why does he think you're interesting?" he asked, ignoring the furious man on the other side of the layer of fire. He reached out and caught blonde strands of her hair between his fingers and tugged.

Shiemi could recoil no further. She wished desperately for Nii-chan. She wished desperately to save herself. Something. Anything.

(This damsel in distress thing would shame Shura's teachings.)

"I—um—"

Another furious roar echoed. There was a flash of silver, the clang of metal against metal, and Shiemi found herself pressed into Rin's chest. He held a blazing sword at the boy's throat, hanging in the air.

"Don't," he hissed. " _Ever._ Touch her. _Again_."

Amaimon stared curiously. "Why not?"

" _Mine_ ," Rin hissed. " _Get. It?_!"

"No," said Amaimon. "Not at all. Faust wants to know why you like her. Why _do_ you like her? I don't get it."

His claws were digging in to her sides, through her clothes and into her ribs, tearing through fabric and flesh. Shiemi winced, wondering if she would bleed through her kimono. It hurt. It really hurt. She bit her lip.

"Rin—Rin, you're hurting me," she whispered into his collar bone.

His grip only tightened. Shiemi fought not to gasp in pain.

"I'll _kill you_ ," he told Amaimon. He was beastly with rage and hatred.

The boy shrugged. His shoulder flopped back and forth, a crow's shrug; wind, earth, and sky for all he cared about the fit.

"You are so boring. I'll see you later, little brother," he said.

He waved, bored, then flickered into non-existence.

For a moment, there was silence in the ruined room.

And then:

"Shiemi," she murmured. "My name is Shiemi."

"Shiemi," he said. "Shiemi."

A breath.

"I'm sorry, Shiemi."

Somehow _sorry_ didn't seem good enough.

"I know. That just—it really, really hurts," Shiemi whispered. "Let me go, please, Rin. Please. It hurts."

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "I'm so sorry. I— _fuck_."

She didn't tell him to stop apologizing. He stopped on his own after that, drawing his claws out of her skin. Her blood was all over his hands. They both looked at the bright red, there, dark and glistening against his skin. His eyes were wide and wanting. Manic and mould. Violently. Viciously.

"Shiemi," he said again.

She watched him lower his head to his hands and lick her blood away slowly with eyes blue and smiling.

Shiemi stared at her toes, fighting the urge to vomit.

—

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 _tbc_.


	5. take off

—

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Izumo smeared mud across her cheeks and into her hair. It smelled of rust and earthy decomposition—smelled of blood, the dead, the dying. She dirtied her clothes, rubbed leaves across her neck to wipe out the human scent of her blood, and coated herself in any muck, grime, sludge she could find.

She looked at her reflection in the only mirror she had—a tiny compact mirror that Paku-chan had given her a long, long time ago—and didn't recognize herself. It wasn't just the guck she'd covered herself with, either.

There was a haunted, hunted look in her eyes, wary and cold. Maybe it was something that came with being part of a war, no matter which side; but it was there and looking at herself gave her chills.

It wasn't a good feeling.

The tent was small and cramped, and the sensation of eyes on the back of her neck had her twitching. Izumo had always hated being watched. She tossed her head, irritable.

"Go away, Shima, I know you're there," she said. She didn't turn towards him, even when his chuckling was her first reply.

"Awww, Izumo-chan, don't you love me anymore?" he asked, sing-song.

Izumo grit her teeth and flushed guiltily. "I didn't love you in the first place, dolt."

"So mean," he laughed. His hands came up to rest on her shoulders, spider-fingers closing tight and digging in. He spun her around and looked at her, eyes uncharacteristically serious.

"There's no one around, Izumo-chan. It's just us," he said softly.

Izumo bit her lip and almost pushed him away. What if someone came in and _saw_? What if they thought less of her? But… but at the same time… what if—what if he _died_? What would she do if he died?

When he tugged her closer, she didn't shove him away.

"I'm all dirty," she muttered into his chest.

His arms went around her. They stood there quietly together. Izumo didn't want to say anything to ruin the silence between them; with things left unsaid, perhaps the silence was better. Perhaps the silence would keep them both alive.

Though Izumo sincerely doubted it. Shima was terrible at silence.

She pulled back and glared up at him from beneath her eyebrows (he'd never made fun of them like the other kids did), trying to make her face as menacing as she possibly could. Inspiring fear in Shima wasn't hard; she'd had years of practise.

"If you die," she said, "I will never, _never_ forgive you? Get it? _Never_."

His fingers found the tips of her pigtail and pulled gently. Shima tucked in her frayed edges, frayed nerves, frayed convictions; accidentally resetting her internal clock to _normal_. Izumo would have giggled, but she wasn't that type of girl. Instead, she glowered at him for another moment and then punched him to get her point across.

"Seriously, Renzou. Don't die on me, okay?" she murmured with her head down.

He touched the top of her head. Mud crusted underneath his hands, but he tipped her face up and dropped his forehead to hers. His hair was going blond.

"You need to dye your hair again," Izumo whispered. She could feel the tears building up inside of her, but she would not— _would not_ —cry. This—this meant nothing. It never meant anything, because he was Shima and he was slut and—

"I know," he said.

"I hate you," she muttered the words into his shirt.

"I know," he said again. His mouth pulled up in a smile, scheming and Shima; a little broken and mostly playful, pink-haired and fifteen forever and hiding in dusty nooks in classrooms because _this is not how we do things here_ , she'd told him. Izumo shook her head and rolled her eyes.

"I am going to save my friend. You are coming with me. If you die, I will hunt you down and kill you _myself_."

Which made no sense, but then, sense was overrated in a world torn asunder; or at least, that was what Izumo had found.

She was covered in dirt and mud and dust, a forgotten girl with demons hiding in her sleeves for lack of blood and summoning. She was warrior and princess, Exorcist and devil and maybe just the littlest bit lonely.

The walked out of the tent together and Izumo whispered the wish over and over and over again under her breath. The backs of their hands brushed.

Izumo kissed the words into the air.

"Please don't die. Please don't die. Please don't die."

/ / /

The sun was setting.

Shura laughed. She could barely remember the last time she'd gotten a fair night's sleep; much less the last time she'd seen proper sunlight. Maybe they would all just live in this bleary crimson light for the rest of their lives, trapped in the sunrises and the sunsets and the spilled blood, the in-betweens, the hatred and the destruction.

It wouldn't be a bad thing, part of her mused softly. Her name meant carnage; why not enjoy it? At the very least, enjoyment would be something different. Enjoyment would be something not inane, not depressing, not crazy-making. Enjoyment would be something new.

She waited and watched her Exorcists line up in front of her like toy soldiers—they were not meant for war, these children. They'd hunted all day for clues to where they would search through the night. Caught in time out of time, they all looked tired. Delicate.

The urge to crush them all was as strong as ever. Shura smiled.

"Well now," she said with her hand on her hip. "Lookit ya, all dressy an' proper. Yeh don' even look like my students!"

This was the understatement of the year. They wore leaves and dirt, but Shura could see the war gear underneath all the camouflage. They wore black and white, suitable for demon-slayers on a hunt to reclaim one of their own. They looked like mercenaries. They looked like death, coming in style.

And Shura was so very, very proud of them.

"Shura-sensei, when do we leave?" Konekomaru asked.

Shura turned and looked at him, contemplative. He was her closest student—he'd been such a coward that she'd wanted nothing more than to push him in front of a bunch of demons and let him loose. Of course, once she'd done that, there had been no going back. He'd wanted training, and training was what he got. And now he was short, quiet, and dangerous. She smirked at him, fond.

"Soon as th' sun goes down, Kitty. We're gonna let th' fightin' start, an' then we're gonna go find ourselves a prisoner. Y'follow?"

They all nodded. She looked from one face to the next. Bon looked determined—that wasn't surprising, Shura knew how he felt about their little blonde fairy-girl. Her Kitty watched the sky from behind his glasses, wary. Takara looked… bored; there was no other word for that blank look of discontent on his face. Shima watched Kamiki, and Kamiki stared at her with a kind of hunger, a burning desire to _move_ , search and find.

They were tight-knit group.

It was a pity they were missing one of their own.

"Fifteen minutes, ladies. Once th' sun drops below the horizon, you go. I want'cha back by morning, Moriyama or no Moriyama. I won' risk ya dyin' like rats in a trap."

They'd all been over this so many times.

She'd said that so many times.

And they'd always pulled through. Shura would have bit her lip, but she thought that that probably would have set them off; they all would have wondered what had her so nervous. She shouldn't have been nervous.

Shura smirked. "Go on then, little birds. Fly. Go."

And they did.

Shura watched them shoot off into the night. For a moment, she stood still. She soaked in the scent of carnage, drew it deep into her lungs. It brought back childhood, riding on snakes and her mother's soft smile.

Why not enjoy it?

And then she ambled after them, intent on finding her own prey.

/ / /

Shiemi stared at her hands. She'd bitten her nails down to the quick, and the skin around her nails had gone red and inflamed. It was such a nasty habit, one she hated and yet gave in to on any occasion where she was primarily nervous.

And she was so nervous.

She felt choked, like hands around her neck. Without the barrier of golden bars between her and the world, he'd brought her to a room that was small and quiet and screamed of the impersonal, like no one had ever slept in it before. But she was still trapped.

God, she was trapped, so trapped, what was she doing here? Why hadn't she tried to—to escape, to go? Why hadn't he tried—?

"Shiemi?"

"Huh?" she said.

"You look sorta sick," Rin said. He blinked curiously at her.

Shiemi shrugged a little. She was tired and sad and missed her friends. She hated being trapped. She hated everything. But Rin looked at her with concern in his eyes and it wasn't fair—it wasn't fair at all, because she cared about him, she did.

She wasn't supposed to care about him.

It wasn't fair.

(Nothing was ever fair. _War_ wasn't fair. Shiemi had no right to complain, she knew, but that didn't stop her from wanting to. It didn't stop her from thinking it. It didn't stop anything. It didn't _change_ anything. Shiemi bit her lip.)

"Rin—I… I'm okay," she said.

"Are you sure? You don't look so good."

"No, really," Shiemi said. She fiddled with her hair to stop herself from biting at her nails some more or cracking her knuckles or some other vaguely disgusting habit that she'd picked up somewhere along the way. She'd always been like that, soaking up other people's habits like weeds soaked up sun and water— _you're a weed! But's that's okay, I like weeds_ —and now was no different.

"I'm just tired," she mumbled.

And maybe she was.

He looked at her for another long moment, and Shiemi caught herself drowning and clutching at the satin sheets to keep herself afloat.

"I have to go," he said. His fingers ghosted over the cut on her cheek, then down her throat, resting on her pulse point for a moment longer than necessary. She wondered if he was feeling her heart beat the blood through her veins. She wondered if he regretted keeping her alive.

"Okay," Shiemi said.

"Don't look so sad. I'll be back," he laughed.

Shiemi shook her head with closed eyes, because no, that wasn't what she was worried about him. He had a war to fight (even though they weren't on the same side), but the fire would protect him. He would come back whole and unharmed.

The fact that she was worried about him at all was what made her sick.

Shiemi wondered if the urge to curl her fingers into his clothes was natural, or some trick in the back of her subconscious meant to torture the rest of her mind. She kept her hands at her sides and curled them around the edge of his bed, feeling like a rag doll.

"I know," and her voice was so soft that it barely stirred the air.

He touched the top of her head and disappeared.

She fell backwards with a muted _thump_. The bedroom slid in and out of focus.

Shiemi slept.

Or at least, she thought she did. Her dreams were strange and fragmented—

—dancing at the Vatican with Izumo-chan and Paku-chan, and Bon, offering a hand with a dark blush across his cheeks and accepting because he was sweet; he'd always been sweet. And it was nice, just dancing in the light to the symphony—

—sitting on the pier with Konekomaru, swinging her legs back and forth over the colourless water in the middle of summer—

—Izumo-chan with her nose up, throwing insults at Shima and then laughing behind her hand to stifle her amusement—

—Shura-sensei coaching her through her first summoning, second, third, eighth, twentieth; until she got the hang of it well enough to do it on her own. And Nii-chan, popping up and hiding behind her hair and giggling—

—gardening, down on her knees in the dirt under the warm sun, pushing her fingers through the earth and listening to everything as it sang of life, greenery, and happiness—

—and then she sat up with a gasp, sweat rolling down her spine.

All those things that she had loved so very much…

Gone forever.

Shiemi dropped her arm over her eyes and very quietly sobbed herself back into sleep.

/ / /

"Such a boring war," said a man with a cup of tea. He sat in a winged armchair, resting his head against his hand, and sipped at the sweet, milky liquid.

"You would think that," replied the tousled-haired boy sitting on a cloud.

The man chuckled. "And why would I think that?"

"Because you didn't orchestrate it. It's someone else's game. You had nothing to do with it, so you have to sit back and watch and, knowing you, Mephisto, you probably hate that."

Mephisto laughed out loud. "When did you get so wise?"

The boy shrugged. "When I got bored of watching you and Amaimon skew Father's plans for your own amusement."

There was a moment of contemplative silence as Mephisto looked at the youngest of the Eight Kings.

"You went and grew up, Abaddon! I never thought it would happen! Oh, my darling!" Mephisto said, and he wiped away s stray tear of happiness.

The boy stared at him, utterly unmoved. "You're not funny."

"But of course I am! I'm the funniest of all the jokers in the King's court. Why else would they keep me around?"

"They _don't_ ," the boy reminded him. "Anyway, I'm off. I've got better things to do than watch you drink that disgusting human delicacy."

Mephisto waggled his fingers in his brother's general direction even as the wind came up and stole the youngest King away. What a poor sport, Mephisto thought. No, it wasn't his game, but that certainly didn't mean that he didn't enjoy what his two youngest siblings were playing with.

Of course, it was unlikely that Rin and Yukio would die—they did have very good luck. But it would a playwright's dream in the watching, and Mephisto wouldn't miss it for the world.

He had always loved watching people destroy themselves.

This was no different.

He sat back in his chair, sipped his tea, and smiled.

/ / /

"He left you in _here_? Tsk. No class."

The words came through a bubble in Shiemi's consciousness; they came slowly as though through molasses, thick and incoherent. "Wha—huh?"

She opened her eyes, and found herself nose-to-nose with blank eyes and green hair.

Her first reaction was to punch him in the face.

He moved back faster than her fist could connect with his face (which was a shame, Shiemi mused, he could do with a fist to the face), his hand protectively over his nose.

"And no wards. Sloppy. So sloppy."

"Are you going to try to kill me again?" Shiemi asked. She was almost resigned to it; the whole world was trying to trap her or kill her or _something_ , and death might even be preferable.

He blinked at her. "Why would I do that?"

Like it was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard.

"Because you tried it before," Shiemi said softly. Her voice was neutral because it was true—no inflection of feelings either way. She was stating a fact, not an opinion.

Amaimon tilted his head and blinked again. "I don't think I mean to…"

He sat on air with his legs crossed in front of her, looking like a child with no direction. There was something—odd about him, Shiemi thought, though she couldn't quite lace her finger on what it was. He was… young. Acted young. He didn't see consequences or rules; only the fun.

That's what it was. He was young.

Shiemi almost sighed.

And she'd thought Rin was a handful.

(If that was even the right word.)

Shiemi opened her mouth to speak—

 _Crash_.

"Get away from her or I will _end_ you!"

Shiemi stared, open-mouthed, at the girl standing in the broken doorway. Izumo stood there, panting with blood on her lips and hatred in her eyes, radiating simple fury. Arms up across her chest, Byakko snarling at her legs, she looked like a warrior and a friend. She spat on the ground, then wiped the blood away with the back of her hand.

"Izumo-chan—!"

"Didn't you hear me _?_! I _said_ _GET AWAY_!"

And then everything was moving, and Shiemi saw red.

—

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 _tbc_.


	6. eXORCiST

—

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.

Later, she would recall specific details about that moment. Later, she would remember the tilt to Amaimon's head and the absolute spite in his eyes. Later, she would remember her heart pounding in her chest, scared and frail. Later, she would remember.

But right then, the only thing Shiemi registered was that Izumo-chan was standing in the doorframe and bleeding from her mouth. It was down in her chin in a sheet of glistening dark red, and Shiemi nearly ran towards her to clean it up.

Amaimon's arm shot out to stop her. He was looking curiously at the demon foxes that curled around her legs, hackles up and teeth bared in his general direction. They were red around the muzzle, dripping saliva and shredded flesh to the floor.

"Is that all?" he asked.

" _Get him_ ," Izumo-chan whispered.

The world exploded into movement around Shiemi.

Laughter, manic and high—Izumo screaming and seething wild eyes—Amaimon with blood on his claws, slamming Izumo's head into the wall—the _snap_ of breaking bone was so loud in her years—" _KUMIHO_!"—and Shiemi knew that name, she knew that name because once she'd helped Izumo tame it—

And then the gigantic nine-tailed fox appeared.

It crushed the walls beneath its paws and Shiemi watched as Izumo scampered up its side. Even over the din of destruction, she could hear her friend shrieking orders as the ceiling began to cave in.

A screech of laughter echoed harsh and sharp in her ears; a clay golem slammed into the fox's legs, and then—

Shiemi pressed her hands over her ears, shaking her head back and forth to shake off the fear that was clutching at her gut with an iron fist. Crash of stone against stone, screaming, screaming, the _screaming_ —

The walls crumbled.

The floor shuddered.

" _Hah_!"

Shiemi raised her head and watched, horrified, as Izumo flew across the room. She hit the wall with a sickening _crunch_ and slid down. There was a thick streak of red left down the wall in her wake.

Shiemi felt vaguely like she was going to be sick. She picked her way around the edge of the room, teeth chattering from the force of the roar that escaped from the fox. The golem roared in reply. Izumo stood in response, knees knocking together. She was shaking, her arm wrapped around the bleeding hole in her middle.

And suddenly, hideously, Shiemi knew how this was going to end.

"Izumo-chan, _no_!" she screamed.

But Izumo was smiling, eyes shaded by her bangs. She smiled like Death and distraction, pulling herself up with the wall for leverage and support, lips painted crimson bloodlust.

"Kumiho," she murmured. "Destroy him."

The fox roared its approval and slammed into the Amaimon-golem just as Izumo crumpled forward into Shiemi's arms.

"Izumo-chan! _Izumo-chan_!"

Shiemi couldn't stop the tears. Everything inside of her cringed away from this reality; her best friend was not lying in her lap with a hole in her stomach. Her best friend was not trying to hold herself together. Her best friend was not, was _not_ , _was not_ —

"I wasn't worried about you," Izumo murmured. "Not at all."

"I'm sure you didn't," Shiemi whispered. She shifted to pull Izumo's head into her lap, and though she wanted to, she did not cry.

"It's good th—" a wet, sucking cough escaped from Izumo's chest. Shiemi bit her lip so hard she bled "—that you're… okay."

"Shh, don't try to talk. It's okay Izumo-chan, I'll make it right, I promise that I'll make it right—"

The reverberation around them didn't even register. Shiemi leant over her friend's face with tears down her cheeks and pressed her forehead against Izumo's collarbone; maybe the tears would turn to botanica, medicine enough. She needed Nii-chan for this.

"Stop that," Izumo muttered. Her voice was weaker than Shimi had ever heard it in her entire life. "Just— _ow_."

"Sorry, sorry."

"The—the crying, Shiemi. Quit crying."

"You know I cry over everything," Shiemi replied, offering a watery smile.

"Hah. Yeah. I know," Izumo coughed. "Is there water?"

Shiemi shook her head from side to side. No, no water, no Nii-chan, no nothing that could save her. "Sorry," she mumbled again.

The fox roared in anguish.

"I'm going to die, aren't I?"

Shiemi's eyes went wide and scared. "No, no, not at all, I said I'd fix it—"

"Shut up," Izumo said, not unkindly. "You—you know as well as I do that… well… holes are sort of…"

She trailed off and looked up at Shiemi with dimming eyes.

"Permanent."

"Yeah," Izumo nodded and winced. "Hey. Could you—" and she coughed so hard that when she pulled her hands away from her mouth, they were dark red and wet.

She smiled sadly, face pale and lips tinged blue. "That's going to leave a mark. Could you—tell Renzou that I love him? I—never got the chance. And… heh, now I… probably won't."

Shiemi sobbed. "Don't say that. Don't _say_ that!"

Izumo shook her head a little, in a pool of her own blood. She raised a hand to Shiemi's face and murmured "You're my best friend. You know that, right?"

"Yeah," Shiemi whispered. "I know."

"Good. Tell him, okay? Promise me you'll tell him… what I said."

Shiemi wasn't naïve enough to pretend that Izumo would survive this. She'd seen enough death to know when something was fatal. She knew that there was no escaping this. She nodded sharply, again and again.

" _Promise_ me, Shiemi!" Izumo insisted.

"Okay," Shiemi whispered in a broken undertone. "I promise."

"'Kay. Good… Stay alive… for me… okay? Take care of… the boys…" Izumo murmured. Her voice was so faint. Shiemi leaned over and pressed her ear to her best friend's heart.

The _th-thump_ fluttered.

"Please don't die," Shiemi said, soft as a feather. "Please don't die, Izumo-chan. Please, please—"

"Love you," Izumo whispered. She pressed ice-cold lips to Shiemi's cheek once. The smudge of blood and affection burned against her skin. Everything inside of her screamed.

And then silence.

Absolute silence.

There was a trembling in Shiemi's soul. Something had just snapped inside her, filling her lungs and her heart with liquid nitrogen. The cold soaked into her soul and her mind, hissing vengeance and irrational hurt. And there was nothing— _nothing_ —that she could do to bring her best friend back from the dead.

She didn't realize she was shaking until she looked down at her hands, covered in Izumo's blood. She felt sick. She wanted to vomit. She wanted—everything gone—wanted to kill, tear, _destroy_ —

Instead, she started to draw.

The summoning circle was in her mind, not her eyes, and she drew entirely from memory. Blood was the ink, the floor before her the canvas, and Shiemi was the painter; fingers nimble and furious, dancing back and forth on the marble, she drew the summoning circle with anger and seething grief as her fuel and her muse.

She stroked out the star, pressing her fingers to Izumo's mouth like pen to inkwell, then the signs for bonding, protection, obedience. The world was very far away as Shiemi drew, far too engrossed in her task to register the victory shrieks from the Amaimon-golem.

She bit her thumb open. The metallic taste of blood washed through her mouth.

Shiemi spat to the side, and let her blood mingle with the bloody circle on the floor.

" _Rise, Ira_ ," she murmured.

There was a tearing in the fabric of space-time as the wrath-demon rose from the marble. Gnarled and twisted like the roots of her beloved trees, it clawed its way out of the floor, anger made incarnate.

" _Lady_ ," it breathed, reverent.

Shiemi smiled. " _Kill him_."

/ / /

Shura ambled through the dark corridors of the little demon complex that hid in plain sight, hands tucked into her jacket pockets. Looking around that dark place, she squirmed. She was too comfortable, and that made her want to crawl out of her skin.

She ran her fingers through her bangs, ruffling through the strands out of long-set habit. It calmed her some, but not enough. There was bile in the back of her throat, and nothing would calm it but sunrise, and the knowledge that all her chicks were safe and sound.

Not, Shura thought idly, that she was expecting anything different.

She wandered through the dark halls like a ghost, there but not, dragging her fingers along the walls. Cool obsidian beneath her touch—she could feel the fault lines deep beneath the surface of the stone, melded in the ancient heat of a dormant volcano. It felt of Gehenna, and something long supressed in the back of Shura's mind ached for that place and that time.

Oh, childhood.

But it had been so long, and the thought of the place she'd once loved brought nothing but shame and rage to the surface of her skin.

She'd never be able to thank Shiro ('s grave) enough.

Shura ran a finger down the seal on her chest, tracing over the red marks. The Gathering Clouds Seal—they said it was inked in angel blood, but Shura knew better. It couldn't be angel blood. Angel blood wouldn't hurt that much.

She could still remember the burn.

( _Mama, it hurts, it hurts, make it stop,_ _ **it hurts**_ —)

"What sort of being are you?"

The voice was low and at her ear, heated breath against the side of her neck. Kusanagi was warm in her palm, itching to search out the sound of breathing to cut and end it. No one would know that she had been there; Shura would make sure of it.

"Why do ya care?" she asked in a pleasant voice.

"I don't. But…" the voice—male, Shura thought—paused and seemed to think about it. Shura wondered how close he hovered. "You don't smell human."

"Nah. Humanity's kinda borin', don'cha think?"

He chuckled coldly. "Rather. Where did you come from?"

"Nowhere ya'd know," Shura laughed. She tensed her body, muscles contracting underneath her skin. He could probably feel it, she mused—her intentions were very clear in her body language.

Shura swung.

Sparks as metal hit metal; Kusanagi lodged into the guard on a gun, twisted, pulled away. Shura danced back, down low and stood smirking.

"So yer not completely useless. Huh," she said.

"And you are not completely unguarded," he replied.

That was when Shura got her first look at the man who would be her jailer. He wore an immaculate lab coat over black clothing; sleeves rolled up to his elbows and twinned guns in his hands. Glasses over blue eyes, mud-coloured hair and a neutral look on his face. Drawing dead and boring, she thought with a flicker of a smile.

She levelled her sword at his face. "C'mon, then. Or ya too scared t' take a girl in a fair fight?"

His jaw clenched as the look in his eyes hardened.

Shura smirked, lips pulling up over her teeth. "C'mon, _Scaredy-Cat_. _Fight_ for it, huh?"

And so he did.

The _bang_ of gunshot echoed and Shura's laughter lingered in the air.

They tumbled through the halls in some twisted version of _follow the leader_ mated with _tag_ mated with _hey, you should probably keep up or you might die_.

A blur of movement, roll, down, up, duck left and right and then—

She was out of breath, back up against the wall and panting. The silver gun pressed into the soft skin at the base of her jaw, but she knew that he was in a position no better; one wrong move, and she'd run him through the stomach.

Stalemate.

It had been a long time since she'd been in one of those, she thought.

"Even?" she asked.

He studied her very intently and moved back slowly. He narrowed his eyes at her behind his glasses.

"What are you?" he asked again.

Shura jerked her left knee up and into his gut, stopping just short of jamming him in the solar plexus and winding him. "S'none of yer business what I am. Don't matter."

He hissed lowly. "Watch yourself, _girl_. My hand might just _slip_."

Shura pressed Kusanagi's tip harder into his stomach. "Call me girl again, and yer gonna regret it, _Scaredy_. Don' think I won'."

He snarled wordlessly. "No," he said. He dropped one of his guns to the floor and his hand came up to curl around her thigh, and she hissed at him.

"Get _off_!" Hatred bubbled up in her stomach, turning to bile. He smiled darkly. His height was leverage to break her grasp on Kusanagi. The _clang_ of metal against the floor echoed loudly in her ears.

Shura bit him.

His eyes went navy and wanting in a heartbeat.

Shura knew hatred. She'd felt it before.

He crushed her against the wall, hands curled around her thighs. Shura could feel his nails gouging into her skin and though it hurt, it was such a desperately lovely pain. Her mind cracked along the seams and she bit at his throat 'til he bled. Animalistic lust consumed her thought process and this—this was a game. He hiked her leg up over his hip.

They shuddered together, a pair of hunters caught in their own traps.

There would be no mercy, here.

/ / /

Ira tore the room to shreds while Shiemi held her best friend's body and rocked quietly in a corner, humming a broken lullaby that Izumo had taught her once at the ocean.

They'd been fifteen and on fire; in love with the world and themselves, each other, holding hands and giggling under the stars. It had been a merry whorl of laughter and salt-water in her ears, and now she clutched Izumo's cold body to her chest to whisper secrets in a dead girl's hair because dead girls told no tales and dead girls were faceless things with wide eyes.

Dead girls weren't her best friend.

Shiemi pretended that Izumo could hear her. She pretended that they were curled in the barracks, and that everything was easy because they were young and wanted it all so badly. She pretended that they were on a plane, boat, car, train-tracks to nowhere. She pretended a lot of things.

Ira raged.

Shiemi didn't know how long she sat there, surrounded by the debris and the sound of destruction, but she knew that it must have been a long time. Hours, maybe. But probably minutes, long seconds that stretched to hours because every minute was like a day.

She was running on grief and rage, but it was running dry quickly, and soon she would be running on nothing at all.

And she was so, so tired.

She slipped to the floor and lay next to Izumo-chan. Blood congealed in her hair, soaking in red-blonde like strawberry wine in the middle of the summer. She was tempted to rub a hole through the circle on the floor, because then it would all end. Ira would go, Amaimon would kill her, and everything would stop hurting.

Shiemi was not meant to be a soldier.

She'd known that from the very start.

A long sigh escaped her lips. She lay there with blood in her hair and linked her fingers through Izumo's in some kind of rebellion—flower-children taken too early, maybe. There was something sweet in the air, though Shiemi thought she may have been imagining it. She was lying on the floor, holding hands with a dead girl. Her eyelids fluttered closed.

"What. Have. You. _Done?_!"

Oh, no, Shiemi thought. Oh, _no_.

He always was trying to save her, wasn't he? In his own twisted way. Heat rushed around her, and even through her eyelids, Shiemi could see the blue fire. It burned in her mind the way the summoning circle had burned in her mind; relentless and there, stinging the back of her eyelids.

She didn't want to know what was going on outside of the circle of her influence. She didn't want to know anything beyond Izumo's icy fingertips woven through hers. She didn't want to know about the screaming and screeching behind her. She didn't know what the gargling sound was and she didn't want to; she didn't want to know any of it. She didn't want to know.

Her heart hurt.

"Shiemi? Shiemi?"

And then panic in his voice when she didn't move.

" _Shiemi_? Are you alive _?_!"

"I don't want to be," she whispered. "Izumo-chan's dead."

She wondered if this bothered him—her, clinging to a dead girl's body. Maybe, but probably not; Shiemi knew nothing about him, really. And part of her (a very far part of her, the part that was not cold and numb from Izumo's death) didn't want to know anything about him. That part of her wanted to remain where she was—pressed to her best friend—forever.

"I'm going to pick you up," he said.

Shiemi made no affirmation either way. He lifted her off the ground. She slipped her arms around his neck out of habit and grace and something else she couldn't quite name; maybe comfort, but she wasn't sure.

Blood dripped from her kimono to the floor.

She was quiet and small in his arms.

Rin shook his head, and turned. She looked over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of a head on a pike in the middle of the room. The eyes had been burned out of the sockets. The hair was green.

Shiemi felt absolutely nothing.

"What about Izumo-chan?" she asked.

"Someone will take care of her," he said.

She looked at the ceiling and prayed silently. Shura had always told her to rely on no one but herself, but Shiemi believed in God; she just didn't believe that he cared. But it couldn't hurt, and wishing for safe passage to the world of the dead for her friend would never be enough.

"Okay," she murmured.

"Do you want to walk?"

Shiemi shook her head violently. She didn't want to walk. She didn't want to _live_. She rested her forehead against his collar bone. Tears slid down her cheeks. He carried her to a room all in pale blue. There was a bed with black sheets and he set her there, in the middle of the bed on top of the covers.

"Hey," Rin muttered. "Don't cry."

"I can't help it," Shiemi said. She made no move to wipe the tears from her face. She sat still and crying, unable to do anything at all. He raised a hand to her cheek and touched the tear track there, at the corner of her eye. She was splattered with blood and saline.

Rin leant forward, and licked it away.

One lick at a time, he cleaned her face.

Shiemi raised her hands to his hair and looked him in the eye. She didn't know what she was about to do, but that was okay. She probably was never going to know anything again. She tipped her face up.

He jerked back, shaking his head.

"No," he said, quiet. "No."

She stared at him, shaken, and looked at the face of someone she didn't know. "I don't know anything about you."

He touched the top of her head. "You need to sleep."

Shiemi didn't acknowledge it. She folded her hands in her lap and looked up at him with wide, sad eyes in a teardrop face.

He pushed her down. "Go to sleep."

She would have shaken her head, but it would have taken too much effort. She fisted small hands in his shirt. She pulled him down next to her.

"Don't leave," Shiemi said, voice faint.

"Won't," he mumbled.

His breathing evened and slowed.

Shiemi lay awake, and quietly thought that she might scream.

—

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 _tbc_.


	7. sA†An

—

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"Did you find her?"

"Does it _look_ like I found her, Shima _?_!"

"Calm down, Bon," Konekomaru said tiredly. "Yelling at Renzou won't get you anywhere."

Bon turned to glare at him, enraged. Konekomaru crossed his arms over his chest and stared the taller man down—they'd been friends far too long for any fear of actual physical ramifications to curb his tongue. Shima stood between them, looking back and forth, nervous as a mouse.

"There's nothing we can do right now. Stop being childish," he said. For a moment, Konekomaru actually thought that Bon was going to hit him.

Then Bon's shoulders slumped and both the breath and the fight rushed out of him at once. They looked at each, soaked in melancholy. They'd stayed static in childhood, the three of them, still as close as they had been the day they'd entered True Cross Academy. And then there had been growing up and fighting and Bon's pathetically obvious crush on Shiemi—there had been a lot of things.

Konekomaru's hand dropped to the sword at his waist. The only reason he wielded it at all was because of Shura-sensei's incessant nagging (because that was the real story behind it—she'd pushed him in front of a bus and then ordered him to pick up a blade in compensation for wasting her time). It was a good blade. Something reliable.

He closed his palm around the hilt, wondering whether to draw it out and drop it to the dirt.

But then, knowing Shura-sensei, she'd probably hit him, yell her lungs out, and then steal his money. She was a terrible teacher, Koneko though, fond.

The sky turned to pale grey pre-dawn above them, and the three men stared upwards.

"Kamiki should be back by now," Bon said.

Konekomaru watched Shima clench his hands into fists, staring determinedly anywhere but Bon.

"Izumo-chan is _fine_ ," he growled.

"She should still be back by now," Bon said again.

Konekomaru stood between his best friends and pinched the bridge of his nose to ward off the oncoming headache. As much as he cared about them, there were sometimes just things that a person couldn't do—there was only so much a single person could take.

"They'll be fine," he said, decisive. "Just late. That's all. Hell, they probably have Moriyama with them."

This seemed to reassure the both of them, and they fell silent, staring at the sky. But something deep in the pit of Konekomaru's stomach told him not to hope for too much.

He bit his tongue and said nothing.

/ / /

Shura's head swam. Her vision was blurry when she opened her eyes and the world tilted crazily for a moment. She didn't know quite where she was; only that her limbs felt like lead and she felt violently ill.

She rolled over and emptied the contents of her stomach onto the floor, gut clenching unpleasantly. It was disgusting.

She spat twice and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, grimacing. "Ugh."

Shura hadn't vomited like that since she'd been sixteen and taking shot after shot of tequila behind Shiro's back in a dingy bar just south of the border of Mexico. She couldn't speak a word of Spanish, but the bartender had thought she was pretty and the tequila was cheap, anyway.

It had been the worst hangover she'd ever had, and right at this moment, she felt worse.

Shura groaned and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyelids, trying to ward off the headache that she knew was coming.

It was quiet and she was alone.

Shura stretched and there was pain in her muscles. The skin on her arms was mottled black and blue; some were already turning a sickly purplish-green-yellow, the colour of weeks-old bruises. She hadn't realized that the damage was this bad. With that in mind, she shoved the covers away, and examined herself.

There were bite marks all over her inner thighs, dark marks across her chest, and finger-bruises around her wrists. There were dark nail-gouges in her palms where dried blood crinkled in the lines and the skin around her seals was darker than normal, still flushed and scratched.

But none of this compared to her hips.

They looked and felt like a shark had mauled them. Most of it was still fresh enough to make her wince when she brushed her fingers over them—some still sluggishly oozed blood. Demon healing or not, this was ridiculous.

Shura was not impressed.

She sat naked on an unfamiliar bed and looked at the ceiling, pursing her lips. There wasn't even any shame; Shura spent so much of her time with so little clothing on that her own nudity had no effect on her. She ran her fingers through her hair, sticky and cold with sweat and dirt, and pulled a face.

"Attractive."

It was such an ugly thing.

Shura raised her head, bangs falling into her eyes as she tipped her head and smirked. "M'glad ya think so. What's yer name, anyway?"

He raised an eyebrow at her. "God, apparently."

"I don' believe in God," Shura replied, smiling with her teeth.

"I repeat only what you deigned to call me," he said, inclining his head an inch in her direction. There was something slow and dangerous in his gaze, and Shura felt it sinking into the dark sticky parts of her soul that she never wanted anyone to see. It was like antifreeze; sweet but poison down her throat, tainting and changing everything it touched inside of her.

She slid her legs over the side of the bed, hands still tangled in the sheets. She pulled herself free and stood slowly, hair falling into a curtain of red-gold around her, curling around her mauled hips. His eyes flicked up then down then back up again—and Shura knew men, and she knew that look, and she was still not very impressed.

Shura waved a hand at him. "M'gonna need m'clothes."

He raised pale arms in a bored half-shrug. "I suppose you would."

They looked at each other for a moment.

And then:

" _Devour the seven princesses, slay the serpent_ —"

They were both moving.

It was like small explosions, their interactions; there was no explaining the need to destroy and rend each other apart.

There was a flare of blue fire and Shura ducked and swung.

Blood splattered across the tile, crimson against white, and Shura stood with Kusanagi at his throat. A thin red line appeared across her cheek, dribbling down her face, down her throat and along her collar bone.

Shura smiled when he leaned against Kusanagi's edge to wipe it away, mirroring the line on his own skin. It was a cancer, quietly eating away at her sanity, and she hadn't noticed it yet; maybe she would, eventually.

"My clothes," Shura said.

He tipped his head slightly, eyes gone cold and burning. Shura stepped back, a wary eye trained on the man standing behind her, and went to ruffle through the mass of stained cloth strewn across the floor. There were holes in her shirt, and her shorts looked even smaller than they normally were.

Shura tsked. "Well, this's a pain in th' ass. Ya ruined my clothes—"

"And _you_ are not paying attention. A pity," he murmured. "I thought you would be more careful."

"Wha—"

A prick against the back of her neck had Shura hissing in pain. It was a syringe, emptying into her bloodstream—whatever it was _burned_ and she gnashed her teeth and whipped around, Kusanagi hunting for his arteries.

"Silly girl," and she thought he smiled. "It will only hit you system faster if you move."

Her vision went blurry as her hands began to shake. Kusanagi clattered to the floor and Shura's knees gave out beneath her, the burning in her veins intensifying. Her breathing turned ragged, arms shaking as she tried to hold herself up. He knelt down in front of her and gathered her up against his chest.

"Wha—what'd ya _do_ to me?" she snarled into his throat.

"I am not finished analyzing you yet," he chuckled. "Come now, did you think I would let such an interesting specimen go? Don't worry, you'll be _safe_."

"I _hate_ ya," she tried to spit the words out, to lace them with acid and bile and all the disgust that bubbled in the stomach. But they came out softly, gently, quiet as a lamb.

"Good girl," he murmured. He smoother her hair back from her face, and all Shura could do in retaliation was to shake her head back and forth, uncomfortable.

The world blurred around her even further, 'til there were neither distinct colours nor shapes. The whole thing was a lovely smear around her, like a carousel of lights at the carnival where she'd once danced on a railing three stories up just to prove to Shiro that she could. Shura tried to chuckle, and couldn't.

Later, she would think that whatever it was that he'd drugged her with had been strong; strong enough to incapacitate her demon blood from burning it off, and the thought would give her the chills.

Shura dozed through a haze. Time had no meaning in this colour smear-place behind her eyelids—yells, bells, cockles shells; children's rhymes and children's times, all flickering in and out of mind.

Like a long-forgotten dream.

Reality came back into focus slowly. It was a little bit surreal; the light morphed slowly into golden flickers along the floor. Cold metal around her wrists and her arms up—the stretch hurt, like she'd been left to hang there for a long time and her bones and sinews were protesting the indignity of it all. She shifted and fabric shifted with her; it was starched and uncomfortable.

Shura's eyes flicked open, but only just. They were dark slats of flat colour against the pale skin of her face.

It was a round room filled with a million candles all glowing gold, all flickering with fire all at once. It might have been a cathedral, once, but no longer. Shura's flame hair fit in, bright, carnivorous and lusting.

"I know yer here," she murmured, voice hoarse.

"Intuitive," he replied, stepping from the shadow of the doorway. He wore black and Shura watched him like a hawk through lidded eyes. He picked his way through the gleaming candles to stand in front of her with his sleeves pulled to his elbows and oh, she would bite through his throat and bury him in the ocean floor so no one would hear him scream.

"Whaddaya want?" she asked. She felt like she hadn't spoken in days.

The candlelight glinted off his glasses. "I don't think you want to know."

"Yer wrong. I wanna know more'n _anything_."

"Even who I am?"

"That don' matter so much. I don' need'ta know ya t'kill ya," Shura grinned.

"Of course not."

"So whaddaya want?" she asked again, but it wasn't a question—it was a demand, and she would destroy him for her answers. There was catastrophe in her eyes.

He laughed and touched her face. He breathed her in.

"I want to peel your skin away from your face and slip inside you to grind against your bones until we turn to dust and I would eat you slowly if I could."

Softly, chillingly.

Shura wanted to jerk back, but that would show fear and Shura was not afraid.

"Yer repulsive," she said.

Cold and factual and yet he laughed again, pressing his mouth to the pounding pulse-point in her throat. It was such an unholy heaving, caught in her throat and she could not speak.

"And you do not feel the same?" he said.

Possessive, and Shura hated him so because she could not deny it. She hung in dark suspension with his hands curved around her hips and it was like waking up to the end of the world—there was nothing special about it because it was the same as every other morning and the world was burning to the ground.

She hooked her chained arms around his neck and drew him closer.

"That is what I thought," he chuckled.

Shura knew then that there was no escaping this—she'd been too slow and fallen too far. It had been too easy to slip into complacency. It had been too easy to let this happen. It had been too hard to fight, too easy to let herself pretend that he was anything but exactly what he was.

And names were such precious, precious things. Shura grit her teeth, and felt herself giving in. She tipped her head back and shuddered when his teeth dug into her throat ( _tear his throat out and bury him under the ocean where it was suffocating and safe and_ —).

The supressed demon in her mind cooed in satisfaction.

She'd lost this round.

Shura hated everything.

/ / /

Three days.

It had been three days.

Shura-sensei had been gone for three days. Izumo had been gone for three days. Shiemi had been gone a week.

Konekomaru stared at the ground.

She'd never been gone for that long before. Yes, there were times when she disappeared for long stretches, but she'd always sent word to stop them from doing something stupid.

And Konekomaru could tell that Bon and Shima were both antsy—but he understood. How could he not? Bon adored Shiemi even if she didn't know it, and Shima and Izumo—well, that was a different story entirely.

Loving someone was dangerous.

And Konekomaru did love Shura-sensei.

Sometimes, he loved her so much that he couldn't stand it. Sometimes, he loved her so much that it made him sick to his stomach. Sometimes, he loved her so much that he didn't even know what to do.

Sometimes, he loved her so much that he hated her.

His hand found its way to the sword at his hip. He held the hilt for comfort and for pain, for remembrance, weakness, strength. He thought of his Shura-sensei, with her drinking and her arbitrary moral system, and he sighed.

But oh, how he loved her.

Konekomaru clenched his jaw.

He needed to find her.

Quietly, he snuck back into the tent. Bon and Shima were sleeping; sleep wasn't something they had much of, and getting rest whenever possible was always the smartest thing anyone could do, Konekomaru thought.

He packed medical supplies but no rations, and slipped them into the deep pockets of his Exorcist uniform. Everything but that was unnecessary—he would not be gone for very long.

Just long enough to find his teacher-love. He nodded to himself.

That was everything, he thought.

And with that, he slipped out of the tent, and into the afternoon light.

—

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 _tbc_.


	8. call me later

—

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"I dreamed you were someone else."

"Hm?"

"I dreamed you were someone else," Shiemi repeated. She lay curled in his sheets with her hand curled into a loose fist by her face. She stared at Rin with solemn eyes in a teardrop face.

She felt quietly numb.

He grinned at her the littlest bit. "What was I like?"

"I don't know," she said. "Goofy? Sweet. It was… like a memory, I guess. Only not."

Dream a dream of dreamers, Shiemi thought, the clear calm of summer sky. With Izumo-chan dead, what was the point, anymore? She'd fought so long and so hard, and for what? Her best friend's blood all over her hands?

No. It was worthless, all of it. Shiemi was tired of fighting. She was not a fighter. She'd thought it so many times—that blood and violence was not meant for a girl of her breed. She'd never _been_ a fighter. She was _tired_.

Shiemi ducked her head and exhaled a long, sad sigh. All worthless. All.

"I miss the sunshine," she said.

"Why?"

Shiemi blinked at him. "Because… it's the sun. It's warm and bright and… _happy_."

He shook his head. Dark strands of hair fell across his eyes and Shiemi did not fight the urge to push them out of the way—what was the point in fighting it?

"Deadly," he muttered.

Shiemi almost smiled. "Deadly to _you_. Not to me. I'm—I'm like a—a weed—"

— _Izumo-chan glaring. "You're like a weed!"_ —

And the tears came, then, quietly and powerfully. The grief that had, not thirty seconds ago, been a block of ice inside her soul cracked, shattered, melted, and came out of her torrents. Shiemi made not a sound as she cried. Saline splashed down her cheeks to soak into the pillow and she cried and cried and cried until she had no tears left.

She cried herself dry and then lay still and looked at Rin.

"Sorry," she mumbled, but there was no remorse in her gaze.

"Don't say that," he said.

"Why not?" Shiemi asked.

"You don't mean it. You're not sorry at all," he shrugged.

"I guess not."

Shiemi looked at the ceiling, painted pale blue. She was sorry for a lot of things, but not for crying. She had never been sorry for crying (even though Shura-sensei scorned it), even when she said she was. It was a release and a cleanse, and Shiemi knew she had no reason to be sorry for it.

Rin reached over to brush his thumb along her cheek and down her throat. He pressed his thumb into her pulse and though she knew that he would never hurt her, Shiemi wondered.

"Do you ever think about killing me?"

His eyes flashed darkly. There was a prick of pain at her jugular and he bent down to press his lips there. Her mouth dropped open and Shiemi unconsciously tipped her head back. The column of her throat was like a pale line of chalk against his sheets. When he pulled away, his face was flushed.

"I dream about it," he muttered hoarsely.

"What's it like?"

"Killing you?"

"Killing me," she nodded.

He carefully stroked up and down her neck. The motion was slow and rhythmic, hypnotic, and she shuddered underneath his touch. Shiemi waited for him to speak. There was something fascinating about hearing about the end of her own life—hearing someone describe it down to the last detail. Perhaps it was a little morbid.

But morbid was all that she could process. Morbid didn't hurt. It was just morbid, and that was something else entirely.

"Well?" she prompted.

"Slow," he said. "Always slow."

"And?"

"I—Shiemi. I don't want to think about it."

But Shiemi did want to think about it. She wanted to think about it until she died. She wanted to know, deep in her bones, that she was going to die. Like surface tension breaking, thoughts scattered, she blinked at him.

"You said slow. Why slow?"

He looked both pained and humoured. His eyes moved restlessly over her face, trying to pin something about her down. He came up lacking, it seemed. He dropped his head to the pillow, breathing raggedly.

"Because I want to enjoy it."

Silence.

"Fucked up. I know."

Shiemi didn't say anything. Her hair spread out around her, a halo of pale gold. She didn't move away, instead burrowing into his side, away from light and into darkness and warmth.

Oh, how the mighty fall.

"D'you hate me?" he asked.

The room was so very still. For all anyone could have seen, there was nothing alive there, in that place. There was nothing breathing. Nothing beating. She drew a deep breath of air into her lungs. It chattered through her teeth.

"No," Shiemi whispered. "Not at all."

"Good," he said.

He gathered her to his chest, a bundle of blood-fragrant hair and shivering nerves, all weak and worrisome fingers smoothing away the lines between what was real and what she'd made up in her head. Shiemi couldn't tell the difference, anymore—maybe she'd never been able to tell the difference between the two. Maybe there wasn't a difference between the two in the first place.

Shiemi thought of broken sky and broken ground, tumbling together until everything was a blur

"I'm so tired," she mumbled.

"Shiemi," Rin said quietly. "Sleep."

Shiemi smiled up at him. "It seems like that's all you ever say to me, anymore."

"You've got blood in your hair," he said, lips quirking upwards into a grin that Shiemi had only seen in dreams—dorky and sweet and so unlike the monster that had ripped her world to shreds. She wanted to touch it and burn it into her memory, the back of her eyelids, anything; anything to get Izumo-chan's blank gaze off of her mind.

"I should probably get that out," Shiemi replied.

"Probably," he grinned.

She thought of the white marble room with the blue water—the quiet emptiness and solitude and the fear. But, ah, fear was such a far sweet emotion. Maybe she'd never feel it again. She'd always cared so much, and now she didn't.

Now she didn't care at all.

"Can you take me there?" Shiemi asked.

"Where?"

"Somewhere I can get clean."

He nodded very slowly. "I think I can do that."

He rolled off the bed, all the liquid grace of a predator in his limbs. It brought panthers to mind, black with blue eyes like the one that stalked her in her nightmares, blood dripping from its muzzle.

But Shiemi didn't have nightmares often.

And everything was so fragmented and so lost right then that she barely had anything to hold on to. She looked up at Rin's offered hand and placed her fingers there, frail as paper, breakable as glass.

"C'mon," he grinned. "It's not far."

When she was back on her feet, he did not let go.

Shiemi expected her blood to rush to her face, and colour her cheeks to dull red. But there was nothing; only an empty feeling in her chest and so she didn't move away. Rin looked down at the top of her head.

"This way."

She followed after him, half a step behind; and Gehenna, heaven and _hell_ , she was like a child, Rin thought. A frightened child, a doll, a girl who kept falling in love with all the wrong things, she clung to his hand as they moved through the darkness.

He grinned into it, soaked it up and in and reveled in it. It was a quiet revel, nothing like the dark carnivals in Gehenna's obsidian towers where they danced all night and the wine poured thick and red like blood. Rin had lived those revels, wearing an imp's laughing face in the flickering light of burning blue flames.

And now he led an army to bring his father's dearest wish to fruition.

It was a fool's dream, of course; to combine Gehenna and Assiah was impossible, everyone knew that. And yet he and Yuki were prepared to bring down the walls of time-space, rend holes, tear the seams of the world apart to accomplish what they wanted. They were the favoured Terror Twins.

They would not fail.

He turned down a quiet hallway and kept Shiemi behind him. Though the walls were of Yukio's creation, there was still no telling what sort of horrors hid among them. It would be an amusement to him—the death of underlings always was amusing.

Yukio was sometimes sick, like that.

"Here," Rin said. The blackness before them melted away and he led her to white familiarity.

Shiemi tipped her head to the left, unsure.

And she was painfully beautiful, then. She was painfully beautiful like a dead fawn, innocent and wrecked on the side of the road. She fisted her hands in her ruined skirt, stained muddy-brown with dried blood and stared at him, frightened sky-eyes framed with thick gold lashes in a pale face. Rin stuffed his hands in his pockets, shrugged, and grinned easily.

"Get clean, okay? I'll leave, if you want."

Shiemi shook her head violently back and forth.

"Don't," she murmured, trembling lips and shuddering breaths. "Don't leave."

"Hey. Don't look so sad. M'not going anywhere," Rin muttered, concerned. Her face cleared, a tiny little smile working its way across her mouth in a wisp of movement. She was a crinkled photograph, standing and smiling at him, twisting her hands back and forth.

"Thanks," she mumbled, looking down. "Don't—look, okay?"

Rin raised his hands, innocent, almost, like he was about to wave off smoke in his eyes, though the only smoke he'd ever properly encountered had been of his own making; burning up worlds did that.

There was still pleasure in destruction and Rin turned on the spot to lounge on the floor. The almost-silent _splish_ of water lapping against marble had him turning around. Her skin was ghostly in the light, the knobs of her spine white protrusions of bone underneath a film of skin so thin it might have been paper. He counted them one by one, the hunch of her shoulders still and too-skinny.

The corn-silk of her hair was almost colourless in the light; it bleached away everything but the blue of the water. And she was breaking, he could tell, but it was a beautiful breaking. It was a wilting of petals on the last flowers in early autumn as the first frosts came, and the colour left her cheeks to deathly pale.

He could do nothing to stop it.

He didn't know if he would do anything to stop it, even if he could.

Rin sat back and listened to her breathing, doodling nonsense on the floor to pass the time. Maybe he would have said something, but she spoke first.

"Everything is different now," she said simply.

"Yeah, probably," Rin told the wall. His shoulders flopped up and down, uncaring, because it was true.

Everything had changed when he'd found his little witch clinging to her tree above a battlefield where the dead and the dying screamed through fire and danced with their won skeletons. Perhaps not for her, and Rin cocked his head to the side and it was their shrieks that filled the silence in his head.

His grin was fanged glory, blood bubbling over a cut lip, getting all the things he'd ever wanted.

"There's no soap," Shiemi mumbled.

A slow kind of amusement settled over him. Soap. She was worried about soap, as if the water wouldn't do a good enough job on its own, as if it mattered, as if the smell of blood on her skin didn't make him half-crazy. He laughed, low and strained.

"Look behind you," he said.

He didn't need to look to know that the bar of soap sat there, innocuous and yellow-ivory, just a shade darker than the marble. He caught sight of her fingers closing around it, nails bitten down to the quick with dried blood crusting in the winkles in her skin and the whorls on her fingertips. Rin could count all the ways it made him ill, but it would have taken him a lifetime and a half.

"Oh."

Rin had never apologized in his life. Apologies were not for princes. Guilt was not for princes.

But the problem was that Shiemi—Shiemi, _Shiemi_ —was above such things. She was a symphony cresting and Rin sometimes caught himself singing along, if only for the irony of it. The wall was less interesting than her back but just as white and he kept his eyes trained on the marble to stop himself from doing something that could destroy them both.

He tipped his head back. "I should probably go, huh."

"I'd rather you didn't," Shiemi whispered.

"There's an army out there."

Rin didn't need to continue the sentence. He let it hang there in the air between them— _and I have to lead them_.

Whether she nodded or not was irrelevant.

He had a war to attend to.

Off the ground and up in a clown's roll, Rin spun. Electric flames licked along his skin because sometimes he just wanted to lose control; sometimes he wanted everyone to lose control.

Shiemi looked at him over her shoulder, and offered a weak smile.

A world of words in such a thing, Rin thought. He knelt and traced the contours of her mouth to burn the memory of her smile into his fingers, into his consciousness, into his eyelids so that it was never, never forgotten.

"I'll be back, little witch."

It was a promise, if a dark one that veered towards the heinous things. Rin's fingers lingered at Shiemi's lips for only another second before he retracted them. She was wide-eyed and so innocent, still covered in blood and so very pale.

Rin had never wanted to ditch his duties so much.

He jerked backwards, still smirking.

As he melted through the door, he heard her voice.

"Goodbye."

/ / /

Rin watched the battlefield with blazing eyes and a crooked smile. The sky bled red and cloudless, even as the sun sank into the horizon.

"Well… they'll give, soon."

"Ha, probably," Rin laughed. His hair was wild from the wind; wild-haired, wild-clothed, wild-faced and wild-eyed, and he grinned at his twin from out of the corner of his eye. Yukio's face was blank and mild. His throat was speckled darkly with bruises.

Rin's grin grew. "What beat _you_ up? Was it a bitch? Huh? Did'ja get some?"

Yukio made no move to deny the claim, true to his nature, but Rin saw the slight upturn of his brother's lips. He threw back his head and crowed in delight.

"So it _was_! How was it?"

" _That_ is none of your business, Brother," Yukio deadpanned. He pushed his glasses up his nose with the tip of his middle finger, hand curving around his face. A fang curved over his lip. "Do we kill them, now?"

"Yeah," he said. His grin could have split his face in half.

"Yeah," Rin said again. "We do."

—

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 _tbc_.


	9. CHaos+CHorus

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Somewhere, it was summer.

Somewhere, innocence still existed in cloudless blue sky and the simple things like smiling were currency. Somewhere, nothing hurt and no one died. Somewhere, the world was still golden and good and clean.

Somewhere, it was summer.

Konekomaru danced with the dark, searching for his teacher in a place devoid of light and heat. It was a place that had never seen summer. It was a place that never would. He crawled through the dank and mouldy, knees digging into the ground, crushing leaves and bones beneath him. Something _squelched_.

 _For Shura-sensei_ , _Koneko_ , he reminded himself. He repeated it over and over and over in his head, _Shura-sensei—Shura-sensei—Shura-sensei_ —because it was all that was keeping him sane. The thought of her was all that kept him moving forward.

His arms shook with the effort of dragging himself to his feet, digging Tokijin into the ground, breathing raggedly and barely able to stand. The two and a half days without sleep were starting to get to him.

If only a little.

The sky was lightening in the distance. It was in the _kree—ee—eek_! of the monsters overhead that Konekomaru found himself gathering his strength. They retreated as they did with every sunrise.

This time, Konekomaru followed them.

They screamed through the air, back and forth in zig-zag patterns through the atmosphere. It was like children's tag—they bumped into each other, pushed, shoved, flew back and started it all over again; but even among the chaos, there was a definite forwards movement. They were going somewhere, all of them, in a mass-movement like birds flocking south for the winter. To somewhere else.

And Konekomaru was determined to find out where that somewhere was.

He dashed between trees cragging towards the sky. The branches clawed at the air and his uniform as he went, clinging and ripping at the fabric. He would save his teacher in torn clothing, a messenger of Life with livid destruction at his heels. Konekomaru was Exorcist.

He would not fail.

The demons hissed and swirled, funneling down into a little clearing. They whirled round and round in circles in a demented waltz, laughing in a harsh way that put his teeth on edge like blood and strawberries and white lace stained with ink. They sunk into a still black pool in the middle of the forest floor, languishing away contentedly.

He'd not seen this place before—he'd not known it had existed. For a moment, he paused to calculate the likelihood of his dying. It was high. Higher than he liked to admit.

But—Shura-sensei—

Konekomaru grit his teeth.

There was really only one thing _to_ do.

(If he wanted to save her, that is. If he wanted to retain any shred of dignity, that is. If he wanted to still be able to look in the mirror and not despise what he saw there, that is.)

He set his jaw, decision already formed in his head. It was half-cracked, but he didn't think there was any other way to go about it. It was this, or giving up—Konekomaru was not about to give up.

He headed straight for inky pool; limbs pumping, muscles contracting, heart pounding. Barely able to see, barely able to breathe; this was stupidity at its finest, he knew, but he paid it no heed.

The demons around him screamed.

He didn't even register them.

He neared the edge of the pool. His reflection was colourless and perfect, the growing daylight glinting off his glasses. He careened back and forth at the edge, driven forwards by momentum and though he very nearly saved himself, it wasn't enough.

Konekomaru pitched forwards into the inky water and fell.

And fell.

And fell.

/ / /

Shiemi stayed in the water so long, her fingers shrivelled up and gone pruney the way they always had when she was a child. The water dripped off her fingers when she raised her hands to her face to look at the extent of the damage to her skin.

It didn't look like it could get much worse.

But at least there was no blood left. Not in her hair, not under her nails, not smeared across her cheeks—the water had lifted it all away, washed away cuts and bruises and shame. It left her drained and quiet, an exoskeleton of herself, dying inside quietly and shrivelling up into nothing. Just like her fingers.

Shiemi heaved a great sigh and slipped out of the water. Towels and fresh clothes awaited her, just as last time, and she buried her face in them to breathe in the innocuous scent of cleanliness.

If she closed her eyes, she might have been pressing her face into wind-dried blankets.

But of course not.

Shiemi hoisted herself out of the water. The marble was cold underneath her skin. She wrapped her arms around her knees and sat there for a minute, a little ball of fears and dead dreams.

"Izumo-chan…" she murmured.

She tipped her head back to stare at the ceiling with glazed eyes.

Her heart should have hurt.

But it didn't.

Rin had—well, he'd let her cry herself dry, sobbing into his shoulder until she'd gone quiet. Her eyes were still red and prickling, her lids like sandpaper. Shiemi didn't know if she was ever going to need to cry again.

There was nothing to be done, though.

Bringing someone back from the dead wasn't Shiemi's forte—and Izumo never would have forgiven her, anyway. Izumo's life philosophy was _it's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees (so get_ _ **up**_ _, loser!)_ —which Shiemi thought was extremely ironic, given their history—and nothing less would have satisfied her.

Shiemi's cheek wanted to pull up into a smile, but even her muscles were tired. She wrapped herself in the snow-white kimono, crimson flowers blooming across it like underwater blood-splatters. She ran her fingers down the front.

What was she to do, now?

She'd never liked sitting around and doing nothing. There were times when it was unavoidable, and Shiemi was a patient person; she'd learned early on that forcing her way almost never worked. She worked like creeping vines, slow and methodical.

But vines without roots were nothing more than strings without knots, bits of fluff lost to the wind. And Shiemi had lost her roots. She'd lost them very badly. She looked down at her feet, and raised them far off the ground as she walked to the wall, right to where Rin had disappeared through.

Without roots, she could go where she wanted.

Shiemi touched the wall.

It melted away beneath her fingertips. There was soft, inky blackness just beyond where Shiemi stood, and there was a tangibility to it—it looked thick enough to sink her hands into, soft as sable and yet more luxuriant, deadly and lovely.

She breathed it in, hoping that maybe it would make her forget.

It didn't.

Shiemi took another deep, slow breath.

And she walked forwards, into the dark.

She breathed and counted her steps; maybe to keep herself calm, but the thing was that Shiemie didn't _care_ anymore. She was a seed, caught on the wind and waiting to be deposited somewhere far away. Seeds had no sense of time, and so neither did she.

It was an easy thing, darkness.

Shiemi wandered in a blind man's world, devoid of light and colour. She couldn't even see her hands in front of her face, not that that was a real issue. She drifted, half awake and dreaming, for what seemed to be a very long time.

It might have been hours for all she knew.

But it wasn't.

Shiemi stumbled, tripped, and hit a dense mass of flesh. She jumped back, blinder than a bat without sonar, arms up across her face and wishing, _wishing_ for Nii-chan.

"Who's there?" she asked.

"Huh, so this is where he hid you."

The hall flooded with sick white light, bright but slatted; through a finger-grip on the witchlight—and Shiemi's world tilted, because that was an _Exorcist_ witchlight and that—that was—

"Takara _?_!"

Tousled-haired and bored, he stood in front of her with his ugly pink puppet on one hand and his eyes closed, looking as young as he had the first day she'd met him. He was wearing dirty Exorcist robes open over a beige shirt (beige, of course; Shiemi had always thought that beige was the perfect colour for Takara), the witchlight held aloft.

"I figured he'd like you too much to let you die."

"I—how are you _here_ , Takara?"

He shrugged at her. "I live here, Moriyama."

" _What_?"

"I don't wanna repeat myself. Don't tell anyone, yeah? That would complicate things."

Shiemi stared at him, too flabbergasted to be terrified. And she should have been—she should have been terrified out of her mind to find someone she had spent _years_ with in this dark place, looking comfortable and relaxed. She should have been screaming.

She laced her fingers together, instead.

"What _are_ you?" she asked. She looked him straight in the face and waited for an answer, steadfast and quiet—an ancient tree with ancient roots, she had all the time in the world. "Takara?"

His face tugged down into a frown. "You don't wanna call me that."

"Don't avoid my question, _Takara_."

He heaved a very great sigh. Perhaps he was rolling his eyes behind closed lids, Shiemi thought with a hysteric, mental giggle. He shook his head back and forth.

"Moriyama," he said, with the air of an indulgent person explaining something very simple to a child in the midst of a tantrum, "you _really_ don't wanna call me that here, 'kay?"

"Then what _should_ I call you?"

Mischievousness coloured the air around him. "Abaddon, youngest of the Eight Kings. At your service."

And then the terror did come. Last-ditch effort, but it came like a tidal wave, crashing over her in the wake of his delighted smirk, closed eyes and laughing mouth. Shiemi's fingers shook.

"Prove it," she said. Her hands curled into fists.

"Do I _have_ to?" Takara almost whined, and in that sound was a history of two people who had never _really_ known each other, but had a surface acquaintance that was enough to tell what they each didn't like. Shiemi had danced with him, laughed with him, learned with him, but had never _known_ him—and that made all the difference.

"Yes."

Another long-suffering sigh escaped him, annoyance incarnate, and she was suddenly fifteen again, lounging around the Exorcist classroom. Bon was infuriated, yelling his rage to the sky, and Takara was bored; sarcastic, sniping through his puppet at Bon's wrath, and Shiemi and the others had stood by and sighed as they waited the storm out. It had been nothing new.

She shook the memory off.

" _Fine_ ," Takara sighed.

There was a quiver that Shiemi felt deep in her bones like the breaking of a seal, and Takara opened his eyes.

Virulent yellow orbs with slit pupils grinned out of the sockets of his eyes, a smiling reaper's skull-face. His skin crackled and shredded, going paler than snow, and a pair of horns curled into ram's spirals took root in windswept, mousy hair. His nails curved and his ears sharpened to points. Even the puppet—ragged, dirty dark pink—changed; it stretched and twisted and coiled around his neck to stare at her with empty eyes. Shiemi could see the faintest glimmer of fangs in his mouth.

The influx of evil nearly knocked her off her feet. It was so oppressive that she couldn't speak. It was so oppressive that she could barely breathe.

"The horns are a bit much, but you wanted proof, Moriyama. There it is. Believe me now?"

Shiemi found her voice somewhere in the recesses of her throat. "I—yes."

"Good," he replied. He sent her a sharp grin full of pointed teeth. "Wanna see something interesting?"

Shiemi eyed him warily. This golden-eyed boy with ram's antlers and demonic energy pouring off him, thickening the air and sending every nerve she had into over-drive—she didn't know him. She didn't particularly _trust_ him, either.

Actually, she didn't trust him at all.

"Why should I?"

He giggled. "Because it's _interesting_ , Moriyama. If you catch my drift."

"I don't—I don't think so, Takara, it's—"

"Abaddon," he said, patiently. His voice was a low, gentle lull, "Moriyama, my name is _Abaddon_. Now, come on. It won't hurt. Promise."

Shiemi took a deep breath, and nodded. There was nothing else she could do—he would leave her in the dark without the witchlight if she didn't, and Shiemi didn't like the dark. It was too easy. It was far, far too easy.

"Fine," she said.

A funny little grin pinched his lips up, and for a second, Shiemi thought of Rin. Rin and falling and painting her name in—no. She raised her head and set her jaw. " _Fine_."

The funny little grin stretched into wide mischievousness. "Yeah, I knew he'd like you. You're nothing like Lili."

"Who?"

Takara shook his head. "Doesn't matter. This way."

He held the witchlight up high above his head as he turned, slow and graceful as a line of music, the shadows crunching under his heels as he went. Shiemi followed behind, fingers still laced together and a tired fear in her eyes.

(She was so tired of being afraid.)

He led her down empty hallways—too empty, really. Shiemi was left with the uncomfortable feeling of eyes on the back of her neck, and she shivered to chase it away. She slipped her hands into the recesses of her kimono, and stumbled along after Takara.

The witchlight burned away the shadows as they walked, but even so, Shiemi nearly lost sight of Takara. The shadows slunk up her skirt and crawled across her hands. She cringed away from them.

"Moriyama, keep up," Takara called over his shoulder. "Don't wanna get lost, do we?"

Shiemi silently despised him.

They turned a corner, and he stopped abruptly. Shiemi very nearly crashed into him; she only caught herself on the last step, shuddering at the thought of having to touch him. Blue eyes and black hair flared in her memory for a sheer second, and Shiemi almost smiled.

"Here," Takara smirked. "In here."

It was a small, square, empty room with a window on the opposite wall. Takara nodded towards it.

"Go on. Take a look," he said.

Shiemi went to the window to press her fingers against the glass, leaving fingerprints there. Her breath caught in her throat. Her voice was choked. She gasped.

"Shura-sensei—!"

/ / /

She woke to pain.

It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last (she was always waking to it, recently, it seemed.). Shura wasn't the type to shirk from pain, but the clink of chains around her wrists had her seeing red. She snarled and fought herself into exhaustion. It came to nothing. She hung in the still-flickering candlelight, now faint and guttering as they went out one by one, and did not move.

Sensation came slowly, after that.

The sound of footsteps from behind her had her craning her neck around, trying to match the oddly familiar sound to a face—

"Shura-sensei?"

" _Kitty_? What—are you _crazy_ , why are you—?"

"No time," Konekomaru whispered. "Saving you. Moriyama?"

"No," Shura murmured.

His fingers were working at the shackles, but Shura could already tell that it would be to no avail. They were demon locks, and they seemed to reject lock picks.

" _Damn_ it," Konekomaru muttered. "Don't—"

A wave of blue fire across the floor.

Desperation hit Shura in the gut. "No, no, _not now_ , I was _so close_ —"

"What?" Konekomaru whispered.

"Kitty, you need to—"

"Visitors, Shura?" Yukio's voice echoed through her skull.

"No, no, _no_ —"

Yukio strode towards them. His lab coat was white and immaculate as always, and it was the first stirrings in her blood that had Shura hating herself and everything around her. She would not— _would not_ —let this get to her.

"Kitty," she hissed, "you need to get _away_ right _now_ —"

Konekomaru shot her a sharp glance. His eyes left Yukio only for a minute. "Who's he? He feels human."

A minute too long. Yukio laughed softly. "Human? Really, Shura, _this_ is what you were working with? I'm not impressed."

Shura growled. "Yukio, he don't have anythin' t'do with anythin'. Leave 'im alone."

" _Quiet_ ," Yukio growled in reply.

"Don't talk to her like that!" Konekomaru snarled, surprising them both. He edged his way in front of Shura, close enough to touch

"Remove yourself from my property," Yukio said, "and maybe I'll let you live another few minutes."

"I—" said Konekomaru.

"Too late," Yukio murmured, simply.

The _crack_ of breaking bone was the only sickening sound as Yukio threw Konekomaru across the room into the wall.

Then gurgling, the _squelch_ of breaking flesh, hacking coughs that sucked wetly; Shura watched as Yukio bent over Konekomaru, and it was almost lovingly that he stepped back from the other man, eyes trained downward and the forearms of his lab coat stained vermillion.

Konekomaru swayed back and forth, wide-eyed, one hand on his sword and the other over his heart. He pulled his hands away.

There was a cavern where his heart should have been.

"No," Shura gasped. " _No_. _NO_! _KITTY_!"

"Shura-sen-sei—"

Konekomaru fell forward.

Yukio turned towards her. There was a quiet look of triumph on his features that made Shura sick to her stomach. She jerked in the chains. Snarled at him. Dared him to come close. _I dare you. I dare you_.

And still, he walked the length of the floor.

He cradled her face in blood-soaked hands; gently, so gently. He pressed his forehead to hers and dragged his thumb along her lips; just enough to paint her skin the darkest of reds.

"I don't share, Shura," he murmured.

"I _hate_ you," she hissed. A single tear streaked down her cheek.

"I don't _share_ ," Yukio repeated.

He kissed her then.

Corruption had never tasted so sweet.

Far in the distance, there was a glimmer of candlelight glinting off of something thick and dark. It was beautiful and sick like dead butterfly wings shining in the sunlight. She caught sight of it out of the corner of her eye, and mourned for something—though she couldn't remember what.

And Shura fell and fell and fell.

/ / /

On the other side of the glass, Shiemi sank to her knees, white-faced, and sobbed.

—

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 _tbc_.


	10. STN-blood

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"Do you think they're dead?"

"They _can't_ be."

A slow exhalation. "No one's seen Takara, either. It's just us left."

"So you're so quick to accept that Izumo's _gone_? Just like that. Even Koneko."

"Fuck off, Bon."

Silence between them.

"We're all fuckin' dead, anyway. What does it even matter?"

"The Vatican's sent reinforcements."

"Supposedly."

They glanced at each other darkly, because though the Vatican had said they would send reinforcements, the chance of it happening at all wasn't likely. The Romans had their walls and their chantments and almost two thousand years of long-laid magic to keep them safe; Japan had nothing of the sort.

And in a way, it made perfect sense. As long as the Vatican survived, there was technical hope for humanity. If the Vatican was destroyed… well, that was something different entirely. It was a privileged stance, but the Vatican were a bunch of privileged assholes anyway, so at least it made sense.

The two men sat side-by-side outside of their little canvas tent, the picture of languidity slouched over as they were. It was the middle of the day, and they were both so, so tired.

"We should get some sleep," Renzou mumbled.

"Don't give up on them, Shima," Bon muttered in reply, running a hand through the shorn locks of hair.

"I'm being realistic."

"Same difference."

Renzou dropped his head into his hands. Bon watched him tremble ever so slightly out of the corner of his eye; the tremors were slow and imperceptible, but still there. He shook his head.

"We fucked up. Shouldn't have let them go alone."

A sad little smile quirked across Renzou's face. "Izumo-chan wouldn't have let me come with her. I know how she is."

The sad part was that as realistic as Renzou thought he was, Bon knew better; the other man still spoke of his lady love in present tense. He hadn't given up, yet. It wasn't an entirely lost situation.

The wind whisked leaves past them, tangling through Shima's hair. The scent of summer forest fires clung to the breeze underneath the dry cranberry sky and he stood up and rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes. He muttered "Sleep. You're probably right."

Bon nodded, eyes on the sky.

Renzou shot him one last glance, sighed, and slipped into the tent.

For a single split-second, there was absolute peace.

For a single split-second, everything was okay.

And then:

" _JESUS CHRIST, IZUMO_!"

Bon was up and ducking into the tent faster than should have been possible, but that sort of declaration was not one taken lightly. He jerked the tent-flap out of the way, and found Renzou kneeling at his cot, tears down his face.

"Izumo-chan. _Izumo-chan_."

She was still and pale in a white dress and barefoot with pastel-coloured wildflowers in her hair. Her eyes were closed and she might have been sleeping but for the unnatural quality of her lack of motion. She was clean—too clean, but that was forgiven in the face of the mound of wild purple columbine that draped across her body.

She was beautiful.

But columbine didn't bloom in late August.

Bon drew back even as Renzou dove forward and pulled the girl to his chest, shaking as he cried into her hair. The columbine fell away.

The front of her dress was the colour of rust.

Revulsion coated the inside of his throat. Bon slipped outside, fingers shaking as he lit a cigarette. The last thing he saw was his best friend curled over Izumo's frigid, beautiful body.

He breathed in.

And then he closed his eyes.

/ / /

There were some things that were unforgivable.

Shura snarled in her chains, rattling a ghostly tale of woe. Her little Kitty—deader than a door knocker.

There were some things that were unforgiveable.

And that was one of them.

Demon shackles were demon restraints, and Shura _was_ a demon-girl; they were enough to keep her in place without too much effort. But a death brought to the surface her other sides—lighter and darker but still as important.

The seal on her stomach burned.

"Mother _fu_ —"

It was a bitter sentiment, then, when she realized that the only way she'd escape was something she'd known and dreaded all along. Her head was bowed, voice low and hoarse.

" _Herald the heavens, rain thunder across the land_ —"

The light that poured from her body was the cloudy, ink black-veined-red that she'd come to associate with sickness, hatred, death and destruction. It was the colour that the sky turned when the earth was soaked crimson and the fires raged out of control. It was the colour of a childhood left behind, of brass, smoke, snakes and molten lava.

And from the Angel seals her stomach, Totsuka-no-Tsurugi emerged.

It was a holy sword, inherited down a long line of once-gods, and it burned away the demon cuffs away as it shone. But in that holy light, Shura's blood reacted, keening in tortured silence and she dropped to her knees, screams echoing inside her head. Her hands blistered, her lips broke and bled. She pressed her hands to her ears and rocked back and forth, forcing herself not to cry.

It hurt.

Jesus, Jospeh, and Mary in goddamn fucking _tinsel_ town, it _hurt_.

Shura pushed herself up and hissed.

" _Adeat._ "

The sword flared—she could _feel_ its annoyance and the sealing even as she reached for the glowing handle to force it back into her body. It went without a fight, but there was smug satisfaction radiating from its every pore.

It was an evil thing.

She collapsed to the floor, breathing hard. She'd never had control over Totsuka—never had the will nor the power. Kusanagi had always been easy, in comparison.

For a long time, Shura lay in the shadows and let them bath the blisters and the cracked lips in forgiving darkness. Beauty was such a subjective thing, in the darkness. Shadows were simple; umbra and oblivion painted the world wretched and she—

Well, Shura had always belonged there.

She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.

Though it came away glistening wetly, she smiled.

Ah, freedom.

Even if she was crawling on her knees, cutting her way through the walls and bleeding from her mouth, she was _free_.

(Free of shackles, but not responsibilities, that was.)

" _Devour the seven_ …" she began.

Kusanagi was a balm against her soul, singing a lilting lullaby that she'd heard her entire life, from long before she had any memory of self. _Hush little baby, don't say a word, mama's gonna buy you a mocking bird_ —

She used the sword's scabbarded length as a crutch to prop herself up, chest heaving underneath the hated white lab coat. It impeded her movement and restricted her sense of self, but for now, it would have to do.

Shura stood on unsteady legs, leaning heavily against her old friend. Blood dripped down her wrist.

She licked it away.

The wall quivered under her touch.

"I'd get out o' th' way, if I were yeh," she whispered. Tenderly, lovingly.

The wall parted into a staircase, and Shura walked up and up and up. She spat on the ground, and though it was flavoured red, she didn't mind.

She walked 'til she broke through the ground and fell to her knees in sunlight.

Shura fell to her knees in dazzling, wonderful sunlight.

/ / /

Shiemi felt nothing.

Two dead. Shura-sensei trapped. Takara gone. And she herself—kidnapped and not wanting to leave because there was good left in Rin. It was there; she knew it because she could see it. She could feel it.

(Shiemi had always been a sucker for the lost causes.)

But…

Two dead.

She leant against the wall, knees folded beneath her, and looked at her hands. They were dry and clean with the nails bit down to nothing, just like always. Healer's hands. Helper's hands.

Killer's hands, too.

And she wondered, then, what the point of the whole thing was. The whole point of this war. Had there ever been a point? Once, maybe, but she'd lost it somewhere along the way and now she didn't care to go back to that time. Now her best friend was dead. Now her teammate was dead.

And the whole world was dying.

She'd thought she'd hadn't any tears left.

But oh, she had.

 _Cry me a river_ , Izumo's voice filled the interior of Shiemi's head.

And the sad thing was that she had.

She tipped her head back, eyes red and stinging. Konekomaru's glasses had probably shattered when they'd fallen—she would have to find him a new—pair—

Rage and sorrow filled her.

She hadn't wanted this.

She hadn't wanted any of this.

A _hiss, swoosh, click_ ; Rin knelt in front of her, shaking. His eyes were so blue and so wild, terrified but still burning.

But such a lovely burning it was, Shiemi thought. She reached for his face, to cup her hands around the sides of his cheeks in quiet contemplation, quiet desperation and she looked at him like that, searching for something long lost in his face (innocence, maybe).

"You're so cold," she whispered.

"What—you okay? Abaddon—fuck, I'm sorry, he—"

"Don't." Shiemi shook her head, blonde hair in her eyes. "Just don't."

Rin tucked the flyaway, softly golden strands behind her ear. He pressed his thumb to the high curve of her cheekbone and drew a ragged breath like he was about to say something or maybe ruin the fragile peace and Shiemi—Shiemi didn't want that, either.

"Why me?" she asked. "Out of everyone, why me?"

"I dunno," he whispered into her clavicle.

And maybe he was lying.

But maybe he was telling the truth.

"I watched him die. I watched him die and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even move, Rin. Worse, I—" she paused to draw a shaky breath. "—I didn't even want to."

"I'm sorry. I—fuck. Fuck."

"It wasn't your fault," she murmured.

"'Cept it was."

"You're always apologizing," she breathed. She almost smiled.

Her fingers crept upwards to curl in the uncontrollable black tangle of his hair, for leverage and for promise and for safety (none of which she had, but something was better than nothing, and this was _something_. It was going _somewhere_ ). She tugged him down hard enough that his other knee clacked painfully against the floor on the outer side of her hip. She couldn't bring herself to care.

"Please," she said, and it was so gentle and so fragmented and so hoarse.

She could feel him breaking underneath her fingertips.

"Not here."

Never here. Never, never, NeverNeverland where the children went to never grow up. Lost and sad and lonely, 'til they found a world of mermaids and pirates and powwow's with a princess named _Tiger Lily_.

She'd liked that story, as a little girl.

That had been such a long time ago.

"Here," Shiemi said. "Now."

"Shiemi—"

She pressed her lips to his jaw, light as a feather, warm as sunlight and suddenly Rin was sure he was drowning; drowning as he'd never had because the blue fire that flared under the surface of his body was hot enough to evaporate any water as soon as it came in contact with his skin. And Shiemi was so very small, only a drop in the ocean but a drop was enough to drown in, it seemed.

"Here," Shiemi said again. " _Now_."

She pressed her palms against his chest, and Rin was lost.

/ / /

"'Lo there, boys."

Bon and Renzou whipped around.

Shura held the tent-flap open, eyes hidden behind her bangs and blood still on her lips. For a moment, no one moved, terrified that maybe this was a dream.

Then she cocked her hip out, threw her hair back, and said "What? Don' I get a hug?"

And Bon rushed to her, because surrounded by being walls and never-ending days was nothing compared to familiarity, and Shura was safe and familiar and it was so, so much better than nothing. Shura was hope and possibility, and they both thought that she wasn't coming back. Renzou stayed at the bedside.

"Thought you were dead," Bon muttered.

"So did I," Shura said.

"Everyone else?"

Her face was neutral. "Later, kiddies. I got somethin' interestin' t'show ya. Look what I found on m'way home. Oi, ugly, c'mere!"

She moved out of the way.

A man in white with gold hair stood in her place, looking bored.

Shura smiled with her teeth.

Violently. Venomously. Viciously.

"Ducklings, meet Baldy. He's our back-up."

—

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 _tbc_.


	11. N-tone

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"I wish you could see the sun."

Shiemi whispered the words into the air between them as Rin's hand curved around her hip. There was something possessive in the gesture, but then, Shiemi had noticed that with Rin—once he'd claimed something, he'd never let anyone take that thing away.

"Why?"

"Because it's…" and Shiemi paused, trying to explain how the world crashed and exploded into fireworks when the sun was out. How the blue of deep summer drained into sunsets and twilight, then to navy and a rainbow of paint across the sky. How the grass felt underneath her skin. The air in her nose tasting like freedom, edged in spun sugar and sweetness. Laughter. Laughter from everywhere.

But those weren't things that she could put to words, because they were memories. They were more important than just _words_.

"It's not something I can explain, I guess," she mumbled.

Rin chuckled against her collarbone. His hair was a mess under her hands, but soft and Shiemi combed her fingers through the tempestuous dark mass. Her nails caught on the tips of his ears and timidly, she traced the contours of the pointed ends.

He very nearly purred. "Feels good."

Colour flooded Shiemi's face.

"Do—" a nervous breath in "—do you think that maybe we could go outside? Later?"

Rin opened a single sleepy eye and caught sight of the sickeningly hopeful look on her face.

A pause, and then:

"Fine."

The smile that split Shiemi's face was so bright it almost hurt to look at her. Rin would have closed his eyes but the image of it was seared into his eyelids. He'd only seen the sun at noon once (and though the intensity of the memory of it still brought chills to his spine), he thought that his preciously little witch was just like that—burning bright and always alive, follower and leader all in one.

His fingers drifted to one of the dark-bitten marks on her throat. His teeth had been there, and now no one— _no one_ —could touch her, because she belonged to him as surely as the war was going to end in blue fire and black skies.

"Thank you," she said at last.

"Probably not a good thing to thank me," he mumbled into her skin. He grinned at her, and her breath caught in her throat; she was prey and frozen in a hunter's gaze, because _maybe if you stay still, the predator will be stupid enough to forget you're there_.

But Rin wasn't likely to forget her existence.

"I'm not all the way evil, y'know. M'mum was human. I think. S'what Abaddon said, anyway. Her body couldn't—I dunno. Couldn't deal."

He paused and smiled a truly twisted smile because it was so sad that it almost made her sick. "Yukio an' I killed her, just by being born. It's the shits."

She couldn't even say anything. She tipped her head towards his chest so that she didn't have to look him in the eye.

"I won't let it happen to you."

Shiemi trembled beneath his hands.

"Rin—" she began.

Then there was a clatter, and the wall shattered. Shiemi didn't make a sound, but peeked over Rin's shoulder, wide-eyed and shaking.

Yukio stood in the still-smoking hole in the wall, eyes ablaze. He was entirely inhuman, the blue fire that was the twin's trademark exploding in the air around him into firecrackers and sparklers, like antipathy, animosity, abhorrence. And wanting.

Oh, the wanting.

"She's gone," he said.

His voice was steel and fury and so, so cold. His voice was colder than the seventh level of hell; that far off world for traitors where Judas and Satan drank themselves to the depths of the earth. Shiemi ducked into the cave of Rin's chest and dug her nails into her arms, biting in deep to draw blood because pain made more sense than anything else.

Rin snorted, and drew the sheets over her tiny body. He shot his twin a disgusted look. "What'cha bitching about now, Yuki?"

"She is _gone_ ," he said again, clipped and still ice-cold. "I am going to get her back. _You_ ," he said pointedly, "are coming with me."

Rin did not look pleased.

"Do I have to?" he whined.

Yukio snarled.

Rin laughed and raised his hands in mock surrender. "Fine, fine," he said. "I'll come and help you find your bitch. Calm your dick, bro."

Yukio snarled _incoherently_.

Rin laughed again, his voice dropping to husky chuckles before he went quiet and stared down at the girl still lying in his bed. "Just stay here," he said softly. "I'll be back."

Shiemi looked up at him and very slowly nodded, eyes smiling, though the bow of her lips remained neutral. It was an automatic reaction; do not show weakness or need in front of something that could destroy her—and Yukio could destroy her. He had destroyed Koneko without remorse—and here, her heart hurt; a single, violent throb—and she knew that if he wanted, he could destroy her, too.

She cupped shaky little fingers around his cheeks to say goodbye, because her voice was trapped somewhere in the recesses of her throat and she didn't want to say goodbye. Not really.

Shiemi closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to his but didn't kiss him.

It was better that way.

Even with her eyes closed, she felt him grin.

He threw the covers off, fiddling with the button on his pants; the material scratched against her skin as he moved because they were the awful brown ones he'd worn when she'd first—come across wasn't quite the right phrase; kidnapped; stolen away—met him, the ones she hated for all they represented. Shiemi forced herself not to move.

Do not draw attention to yourself.

Do not draw attention to your existence.

It was all gone, all the blood and all the hatred, and now Rin was leaving, too. Shiemi watched him as he dressed, pulled his shirt on and did the buttons up. His fingers were nimble and she thought of dancing and how far she'd come—how far she'd fallen.

She bent in the wind. She did not break.

And perhaps that was something important on its own.

He stood and shoved his hands in his pockets, shoulders back and posture slack, he ambled to where his brother stood. There was casual danger in it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Rin shot a glance over his shoulder, the blue of his eyes so vibrant, and grinned ferally. There was insanity and lust in his gaze. He raised a hand in farewell, and sauntered after his brother.

The hole in the wall still glowed with the embers.

And Shiemi thought she should have learned her lesson—there was no love in a place like this.

But the clenching in her stomach and the beating in her throat made her think of nights in Izumo-chan's (and oh God, Izumo-chan, _Izumo-chan, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry_ ) dorm room, learning to play dice with the boys and linking her fingers through her best friends when no one was looking—the princess and her bitter queen. It felt like strip poker and the fact that she flushed all the way down her chest and sputtering over the acrid burn of alcohol down her throat. It felt like floating.

Shiemi lay back, too-skinny and pale even in the dim light in Rin's room with her hair around her face and the small wooden cross Izumo-chan had given her a long time ago on a string around her throat.

She should have known from the start that she wasn't strong enough for this.

She should have known from the start that she couldn't resist.

She should have known from the start.

/ / /

Rin was a creature of colour and life; he was the splatter of violent red on white tile under incandescent light, a blue bonfire in the time just after dusk. He lived on the margins but also in the middle—the outskirts but also in the center of a crowd. He got into to everything, batted it back and forth like a cat with a ball of string—Rin liked to play with his food before he ate it.

Yukio was of darkness and quiet, a silenced gun in the night. He was red, too but of a different sort; he was the slow drip of blood off fingertips in a morgue. And blue, too, because Rin and Yukio were twins and the fire that they commanded was vibrant, volatile, and the blue of deep summer sky. So red and blue and black, the colours flat against each other and went to war to spill shades of grey in all directions.

There were monsters who acted like people and people who acted like monsters; though which category the twins belonged to, neither was sure.

(Like disease, they'd never had exposure.)

"Seen Abaddon recently?" Rin asked.

Yukio said absolutely nothing. The slight shake of the head was all that Rin got as an answer, and he yawned, bored, even as they headed westward towards where the sun set to cause some well-deserved destruction.

Destruction was an easy thing.

The passed through the battlefield unnoticed; two figures in brown and black, shades slipping through the golden afternoon.

"She looks like Lili," Rin said.

Yukio's knuckles went white. "I suppose."

Rin snickered. "That's pretty fucked up, bro."

And it was childhood in a little white room with bars across the window and grey light filtering in; a woman with fire-hair and elaborate kimono, gentle smile and gentle eyes—a mother for the pair of half-demon twins with the blue fire that ran around Gehenna's deepest complexes, causing all sorts of ruckus.

Nothing less from the Terror Twins.

They were Heirs right from the start; as soon as the blue fire flared between them, the entirety of Gehenna knew that they would be next in line for the throne, regardless of the fact that they were the youngest of Satan's offspring.

Right from the very start, Lili was their caretaker.

And so:

A little white room with bars across the window and grey light filtering in and mats across the floor. That had been where they'd grown up. And the woman with fire hair had kept the pair of them in line when no one else had been able to even take a chance at it. She'd had steel in her spine and seals on her chest, inked as red as her hair.

And they had loved her; for all that love was worth in a cesspool of demons.

Rin remembered her crooning lullabies in a strange, rough tongue by candlelight—and there had been pain in her, so very much pain, although he hadn't realized it until much later.

But pain—well, pain was fleeting.

And when the world burned, what was pain?

Rin laughed.

It was a harsh laugh, one that was full of the wild abandon of youth and without fear or regret. Rin laughed when others screamed and hated and hurt. Rin laughed when others cried. Rin laughed at hopelessness and fuckery and loss.

Rin laughed at the world as it fell to pieces.

He ran his hands through his hair, rumpling it to an uncontrollable mess. "What'cha gonna do when we get her back?"

Sparks flew along Yukio's fingertips. He shook his head very slowly.

"I will never allow her out of my sight again."

For a long time, there was no sound but the distant clash of demons and Exorcists. The scent of charred flesh perfumed the air with its own special brand of repulsive. Rin wrinkled his nose up in a very good imitation of Mephisto at his most condescending.

"They should just fuckin' give, already. They can't win," he muttered darkly, his hands shoved deep into the recesses of his slack pockets.

"They are human. They will not give up until they've eradicated themselves."

"What, so you don't like killing them?" Rin asked, a grin spilling across his lips.

The thought of Yukio not killing was ludicrous.

"Do not be ridiculous."

Rin threw back his head and laughed and laughed and laughed. "You really _are_ a fucked up bastard."

"You are not much better, Brother," Yukio said.

"Nah, m'really not," said Rin.

And that closed the subject.

/ / /

Shiemi didn't know how long she lay there.

It must have been a long while.

But her sense of time was so warped that she couldn't even tell day from night, anymore. Shiemi lived on the assumption that such things were irrelevant, now. And they were, in so many ways.

Night and day didn't matter when one couldn't see them.

Shiemi had fallen in love in a hopeless place, hidden away so thoroughly that not even Time could find her.

There was a sick clenching in her heart.

Oh, Rin.

Oh, _Rin_.

And she missed the sun so very much.

No matter how Shiemi squirmed, the terrible feeling in her stomach wouldn't subside. It wasn't something she'd experienced before—she was not a soothsayer, and she'd had no practise in reading the sacred fire nor the tarot nor any of the other methods to tell the future. She'd never learned to scry.

She'd only learned to heal and sometimes to kill.

Soe the feeling was a new one, and it was uncomfortable.

It bespoke danger for the people that she loved.

And oh, but she did love them.

She twisted her fingers into Rin's sheets for a few more minutes, before the decision to get up and find some clothes finally won out. She needed to do something, but she knew not what—only that it was something, and that she needed to do it _soon_ , or she was going to lose everything she had ever cared about.

She shoved the coverlet away and stood naked as a jaybird.

"I need something to wear," she told the room. "I'm going to close my eyes."

A soft chuckle reverberated.

Shiemi closed her eyes.

When she opened them the barest sliver of a second later, there sat her Exorcist uniform, returned to perfect condition. She reached for it to press her face into the familiar fabric, trying not to cry.

"Thank you," Shiemi said. "Thank you."

Shirt, skirt, knee-socks and tie, underneath an immaculate Exorcist's coat—Shiemi pulled them oh in a rush. But her boots she laced with care. A double knot would keep them from undoing on her as she ran.

She needed to find them.

Shiemi walked to the wall and pressed her palms flat against the cool surface. "I need to get through. I need to find him. May I?"

— _she's his_ —

— _yes, but_ —

— _what can she do, look at her_ —

— _she's still_ _ **his**_ _choice, we can't_ —

— _look at her, she can't do anything_ —

— _yes, but_ —

— _ **stop it, all of you. Let her through**_.

And the wall split. Golden sunset filtered down towards her.

Shiemi's breath caught in her throat.

And then she was running upwards and upwards, and tumbled through into white.

/ / /

Shura looked up from her blueprints and her diagrams.

There was something coming.

But, ah, she _did_ know that signature. Violent, hot, blue the colour of an electric current—it was something evil and well-known.

It had branded itself into her eyelids.

Shura bared her teeth.

"Well, boys," she said, "I think we're gonna have come comp'ny. Wanna go greet the bastards? Or do ya want lil' ol' me t'do it?"

Without waiting for a response, she rose from the table and sashayed to the tent's flap. The sinking sunlight painted her a masterpiece—Botticelli's Venus, born from blood and sea foam. She was magnificent in her vengeance.

She drew Kusanagi as she went.

—

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 _tbc_.


	12. die Himmlische Musik

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For a long time, she lingered at the mouth of the hole from whence she came. Waiting.

"He said he'd come back," she told herself aloud.

The problem with waiting, Shiemi thought, was that it was inherently horrible. Waiting for anything, really—waiting impatiently to fall asleep on Christmas, waiting for a bus; even waiting for someone you loved to come home and tell you that everything was alright.

Actually, Shiemi thought as she shifted uncomfortably, waiting for someone you loved was probably the worst of it.

Because there was no guarantee that that person was going to come home at all.

And Shiemi did love Rin—that was the crux of the problem. She did love him. She loved the way she loved plants, wind and sunshine; on fiercer, somehow. She loved him deep in the pit of her stomach, burning blue and true and filling her up with all these dirty, beautiful things. Sometimes so much that she wanted to vomit. Sometimes so much that she couldn't stand it.

But then she thought of his face, and everything else melted away into unimportance.

(Stockholm Syndrome for tea, anyone?)

Shiemi shivered.

It was good to be outside, again.

But the sunlight somehow felt wrong against her skin, liquid gold and dewy but dusty, too; the interior of an antique shop, quiet and forgotten, treasures hid away under age and dirt. Trash heap and fearful, Shiemi rubbed her arms to ward off the unwelcome chill. She looked up at the sky, fading red.

And she knew, somehow, that the world was going to crash in on itself.

The thought made her inexplicably sad.

Shiemi brushed her bangs out of her face.

And she started to run.

/ / /

"So that's it, then."

"Yes."

"Pity. Without Rin, those lovely little Exorcists might have posed a challenge. Too bad. I was expecting it to last longer," Mephisto sighed, and tipped his hat back. He glanced out the window of his miniature castle in the sky. There was a rattle, a _squeeee-eeek_ , and his gaze dropped to the cage sitting on the edge of his desk.

Poor little Amaimon, trapped in that body 'til he recovered some of his lost power; after all, there was only so much Mephisto could do with such a pathetic attempt. The child was doomed to run on that little plastic wheel for days.

Mephisto chuckled led softly to himself.

His little brothers were such a _lively_ bunch.

"Pay up. You've lost, and I'm hungry," Abaddon complained, rubbing at his stomach.

"Not yet," Mephisto fluttered his lashes, smile breaking over the depressions in his lips from his fangs. He sat forward, crossed his legs at the knee, tapped his cane to the floor in time to the tune waltzing through the air. "It's not up yet."

Abaddon pouted. He could have passed for human, right then—horns hid away, and eyes stitched closed, he looked like the child that Mephisto had sent to the True Cross Academy all those years ago for Exorcist training.

(It never hurt to have an insurance piece. Mephisto was a gambler, but he wasn't stupid.)

"Just wait," Mephisto fluttered.

"I _hate_ waiting," the boy grumbled. He glared out the window, but made no move to leave.

Mephisto grinned behind his fingers.

 _Success_.

/ / /

Rin rolled a ball of fire back and forth over his knuckles, like coin-toss, hide-the-penny; children's games he never learned, and glanced over at Yukio's rigid posture.

"We go to kill."

"When do we ever do anything else?" Rin asked rhetorically, and it was true; kill they did. It was as natural as breathing to the twins, had been as natural as breathing since before either of them could properly walk. Painting the world red was as natural as breathing; and Rin had memories of the palace in Gehenna, spattering fresh blood all over the walls just because they could. They'd called them masterpieces, expensive works of art, and left them there to rust and turn brown. Their father had certainly approved.

The line of Yukio's jaw tightened. "Need I remind you of your little _experiement_?"

"My little witch? Not an experiment." Rin shrugged with loose-limbed grace.

"Then what, may I ask?"

"Mine," replied Rin, as if this closed the matter.

Yukio said nothing. His hands lingered at the holstered twin guns—twins, twins, always twins—at his hip and Rin did not need to stare to know what was going on in his brother's mind. There was crimson death there, writ as surely as Rin would keep his little witch out of harm's (or rather, his brother's) way.

Because blood was simple.

It had always been the simplest thing.

Shocks and stomach acid along his nerves; the racing of his pulse beneath his skin, trapped in a fire-fight and Rin sliced through the late-afternoon shadows as easily as a hot knife through butter.

And through they went; Yukio in his coat and Rin in his flames, they strode through the dimming light and Exorcist bodies piled up towards the skies, black fabric stark against the gold-stained velvet above them. The world was desperate for their attention, reaching and yearning and needing, and still the pair of demon-boys killed and killed and killed.

(Just for the record, they might have been anyone. But instead they were neurotic and thoughtless, carnage and bloodlust. They were two edges of the same blade, or maybe one was the point and one was the edge, though who was what was circumspect. Either way they made a scene and a pair. At least they'd never be bored.)

"How far?" Rin asked. "I'm bored."

(Oh, irony.)

Yukio's lips twitched as though flicking off an irksome fly, caught between a colour-smear smile and a grimace sneer, though they could have been one and the same. "Over the ridge."

"Am I actually gonna be doing anything? Or am I just gonna stand there 'n let you kill everyone?"

Yukio tipped his head, considering. There was fire at his fingertips and ash on his tongue, but he wasn't the one that hazed plains to nothing for the hell of it (hell, get it). That was all Rin.

"It is your choice."

And Rin grinned then, and it burned brighter and cleaner and hotter because there was a focus point, something to look forward to. Something to destroy.

"Good," he said. "Not wasteful, then."

"I suppose," Yukio replied, fingers pressed to his glasses, white-knuckled but delicate; they were necromancer's fingers, spider-like, too long, too pale, equally deadly and charming. "Have some composure, Brother."

The little spark of blue fire that slid between his knuckles flashed. Rin snorted. "Composure? Wazzat?"

Yukio's glasses glinted in the dying sunlight, lips curving up slowly to split his face in a half-binary mindfuck dripping saliva in a maw of blood stained knife-teeth, licking his lips; a monster waiting for a meal. And in the iced, clinical way that had always characterized the very core of Yukio's being, he strode over the ridge and look down on the Exorcist encampment and the person whom he considered his property.

Rin, behind him, whistled lowly. "Yow. She really _does_ look like Lili."

"As you said," Yukio replied, clipped and cold. His gaze was trained downwards, pinned and stuck to the woman with fire-hair who levelled a sword up at them. She was dangerous, Rin thought. Just like Lili.

"Name?"

"Shura," Yukio said. His hands clenched into fists.

"Bloodlust?" Rin idly wondered if Yukio was accidentally going to burn the place to ash.

(It wouldn't have been the first time.)

"Carnage."

Rin eyed her again. She did look very much like his surrogate mother.

Although the way she stripped his brother, past cloth and skin and muscle down to his bones sent a thrill of excitement up Rin's spine, because that—that meant she was serious. And oh, it would be lovely; to rend and tear and destroy again, to let the red haze wash over his vision and roll across his tongue, tainting everything with rage and bloodlust.

Ah, it had been so very long.

(But then, Rin's sense of time always _had_ been a little bit warped. And his little witch warped it further, though no one really knew it.)

"Down there, huh?"

Yukio did not even dignify this with a response; he jerked his chin up and down. Viciously, violently.

"Let's go, then," Rin snickered.

And so they descended from the ridge in deadly unison, twinned knives laced with poison, arcing through the dark to slit wrists, throats, hearts.

They came to kill.

They would take no prisoners.

(Except one.)

Yukio kept his eyes on the girl, as though she'd disappear the second he looked away and Rin thought knew he nothing at all—but this was his call, his game, his kingdom to burn to the ground. Rin would not stand in the way of his brother's revenge.

They hit the ground scalding, a gush of flames mushrooming out to flicker around them in a fireflies dream-dance. The blue turned them all nauseating, and Shura watched them with suspicious eyes and snake-bite derision on her mouth.

"We can settle this like gentlemen," Yukio said stiffly. He stared at the girl in front of them with a frightful hunger, a dangerous thing straining at the edges of his control. Rin could feel it ripping, and waited for it to snap. His brother hungered for her face and her life and her body.

Oh, how he hungered.

Rin probably wouldn't have to do anything at all.

A wicked smirk broke over Shura's face. It looked like she'd been bleeding from her mouth—the colour was too dark against her skin, entirely unnatural. There was something viscous in it, the way the expression moved across her face. It was slow, but too sweet. Malignant.

"Or we don' hav'ta. An' ya can jus' go."

"I do not think that that will be at all conducive," Yukio said. "Come here."

"Nah, not feelin' it," she said. She popped her hip out. Bit her lip and tipped her head back, throat a milk-pale line against the sunset all aglow in bloody gold. Rin understood, then, the thrall in which she held his twin.

Yukio seethed at his side, undulation slick like oil as he drew tight the limits of his control. Cold compression down to ice, and though Rin had never liked ice—it went against the grain, so to speak—the cold had always been something that suited Yukio.

(This was over before it had begun.)

But the missive held nothing compared to what Rin was willing to play with.

"Come here, _Shura_ ," and the enunciated words were a hiss, caress, the smell of burning flesh. Nothing would keep his brother from taking her back. Maybe they were better off this way.

" _No_ ," she said and flipped her hair over her shoulder.

But it wasn't often that someone refused Yukio so vehemently. It wasn't often that someone refused Yukio at all.

Rin laughed.

This was such a waste of time.

"Brother?"

"Can we get this shit done, already? I have someone waiting at home," Rin said.

It wasn't meant as a taunt or an insult or anything at all; simple statement of fact because it was _true_. The truth had always hurt the worst, after all. And so Shura reacted even before the words fully registered, whipping a sword up to point at Rin's jugular, eyes level but blazing. Hatred was so easy. She hissed at them both.

"Ya think yer gettin' outta here alive? Who're ya _kiddin_ ' _?_!"

A blue flash knocked the steel away.

Yukio held a handful of robin's egg fire, clawing at the air and glinting off his glasses like violent little shots of electricity. There was a distinct undercurrent of _what now_ , but Yukio did not voice it. He merely stared at him from behind a sheet of impersonal glass, gaze steady.

"Your call," Rin snickered through his teeth. "Whatever you want."

It was a spine-chilling grimace, Yukio's lips pulling up over his teeth, fangs curved and shining in the dusklight. The heat of bloodlust invaded Rin's senses, washing away the last vestiges of his conscience. He could already taste the sharp tang of blood on his tongue, and he hungered.

Oh, how he hungered.

"Then I will _force_ you home," Yukio finally said. He closed his fist around the flames. They went out like a light, like a life asphyxiated with shadows, breathing shallow and fast and smothered away. Such ghastly things, they were.

Shura dropped a shoulder up and down, a crow's shrug, and grinned all lit in a harsh brilliance. It was an exacting thing.

" _Try_ me," she said.

And Yukio reached for her.

 _Clang_.

Sparks from metal against metal; Rin crossed swords with a blond man, Kurikara igniting in his hand. The sword _hummed_ , searching for a throat and the _hiss_ of liquid crimson turned to steam as it gushed from a fatal wound and coursed down a blade on fire.

The shadows on the ground lengthened, darkened, curled around his legs.

These humans understood _nothing_.

This whole world was meant for their perusal. This whole world, right from the beginning, had belonged to the Eight Kings—they were fire, earth, water, air, rot, insects, animals, chaos and destruction. They were the forebears, pal bears of a different age. They were his _brothers_.

And he would not stand having them mocked in such a manner. He snarled, force enough behind his arms to break bones; a grinding of his most fundamental parts against each other.

Rin liked playing with his food.

He would _eat them alive_.

There was a trembling in the air, and a man stumbled from the tent. He was white as paste under a fringe of messy dark hair shot through with blond, and a muscle jumped in his jaw every few seconds. He stared at the four of them, hard-eyed.

"Oi, Bon, y'gonna help us out, hm?" Shura called. There was a smirk stitched in to the words—something to galvanize and force him to action.

Bon took a slow breath, and raised Shima's K'rik.

(Izumo dead. Shima rocking over her body, broken and lost. Koneko dead. Shiemi, lovely Shiemi, gone.

It hurt to breathe.

Bon would not allow this to stand.)

The cranberry sky bore down upon them, sinking quickly to purple-gold and edging towards black, colour anthropomorphism of the devil. Head back, pupils slit and crimson with his hair falling in his eyes, Rin laughed an exhilarated laugh, tearing out of his chest all grit and elation each in turn.

"Whaddaya know; you all might actually be some fun! Oi, Yuki, wanna stay outta this?"

But Yukio shook his head, a grim sort of sneer on his face. He stood behind Rin and carefully clicked the safety off, fingers methodic but nimble, skating along the edges of the stressed black metal as lightly as fresh snow.

The twins stood back to back.

No one moved.

No one breathed.

"S'been a while since we did this, huh?" Rin muttered under his breath, loud enough for only his brother to hear.

The edges of Yukio's lips pulled up into a twisted little smile. He glanced at Shura. She shifted just enough to bare her teeth at him, and it was the loveliest thing he had ever seen—all lust and blood and he would paint her red with the innards of his enemies if he got the chance.

(Not _if_ , rather. He _would_.)

"Yes," Yukio said, "it has."

Somewhere in the distance, a celestial music began to play.

—

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 _tbc_.


	13. technology ORCH.

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Mythology tells of a giant battle in the ancient world—great Zeus against the Titans, his immeasurable strength against the volatile emotions of his parents' generation; he fought for a new world order. It is said he cast them down with a single thunderbolt. It is said that the fight was unevenly matched; it is said that the Titans had never stood a chance.

This battle was something like that.

Rin and Yukio were an indomitable force of brute might. They always had been, impossible to control and impossible to sway to a different course of action. And they matched; Death in black. They were demons suited to this grim retrieval mission.

But Shura and Angel and Bon were giving them a run for their money.

So maybe it was only something like the battle between the Gods and the Titans.

Two against three; they were determinedly evenly matched. Rin played between Bon and Angel, skittering across the dirt and laughing out loud because this was the most fun he'd had in a long, _long_ time. Yukio kept his eyes on Shura, but it wasn't like they hadn't done this before, and they both knew where it was going.

Maybe it was nothing like that.

It was much like a communal dance. They traded partners every few minutes, Rin thrilled with the change and Yukio not so much, 'til it was all a dull roar of _flash, bang, clang_. They fought with blood down their chins and their knuckles from the grate of skin against metal.

It was a dirty thing, this fight. It was a bloody, grit-under-the-nails type of fight, no hold barred.

This was a fight for the killers, the liars, the cheaters.

Shura bared her teeth, and dove forward, skidding along the ground in a rush and shoving Kusanagi out for balance. She would skewed them both, and take back her girl and the memories of her boy—because they were _hers_ , and Shura had never liked sharing the people she claimed as family.

She liked it even less when kidnappers, thieves of hearts and minds, tried to take them away.

Shura did not forgive easily.

And this was unforgiveable.

Her nails contracted against the ground, and she rolled out of the way just as Rin dropped from the sky, sword edge slamming down into where her vocal chords had been seconds previous. The ground cracked beneath him, and Shura was up, dragging Kusanagi with her to stand like a soldier trained in combat; sword edge turned out, wary eyes, feet planted solidly beneath her.

"Goddamn," he shot at her, sparking up with wonder and something that might have been respect. "No wonder he likes you. You're _mean_."

"Aw, yeah? _Mean_? Don'cha think tha's a l'il _harsh_?" Shura mocked.

"Nah," said Rin, and he grinned with his teeth. "I don't like his taste in women."

She would have cut his heart out if she could. Rin knew that, but it was so easy, _so easy_ to slide out of the way. One step, and he was out of reach. One step, and she couldn't stab him through the chest.

It was like pulling wings off butterflies, the _skree-eee-eeeee_ on the inside of his head swaying in time to the play of the air along his skin. Rage the sleeping thrill, rage the darkest shades of fear, rage the loss of control. Rin traced it all out with his tongue pressed to the edge of Kurikara's blade. The flames flickered just behind his eyes and along the metal; they danced at his command. Ah, but beautiful things—it was devastation, a super-nova in the making.

It was the end of the world.

(Or at least, the end of the world as they would know it.)

Bon hit the ground running, sutras flying and Rin tore through them without thought. He slashed through them with claws, going to rip the other man's throat out, ducked down and under to find himself again at Yukio's back.

The heady buzz of the fight raced through his veins, better than any drug he'd ever taken.

It was never the same sort of high.

Rin skidded underneath Yukio's arm to gnash his teeth in Angel's direction, smiling like a maniac and _I will bite you to death_.

The flames bubbled around the twins, a foamy, frothy storm of flames that ate up the oxygen around them and stretched towards their intended victims. The expanse was as impossible to ignore as the smell of charred flesh.

Shura felt sick to her stomach. She dropped to her knees, trying to drag air into her lungs before the fire consumed it like tinder.

The wind was a roar around them, sustenance for the firestorm. Bon's chanting was a whisper lost to the inferno, swallowed whole by the never-sated monster of demonic fire. Try as they might, the three Exorcists couldn't even get close.

And Rin and Yukio stood in the middle of it all, burning and burning and burning.

A whisper, then; a sudden sweetness trickling down through the atmosphere and Shura levered her head up just high enough to stare towards the treeline. Sweat stuck her hair to the back of her neck, streaking down the line of her spine. It wasn't important. She squinted through the haze of heat, vision slightly out of focus.

But the wind—

 _Shiemi_.

The girl skittered along the edges of the forest, clinging to the trees—or maybe it was the trees sticking to her, their branches threading through her hair and the roots cling at her calves; nature had always loved Amahara's little dreamer to death.

Shura rolled away from the twins, trying to get her bearings. What was the stupid girl _doing?_! If she'd _escaped_ , the idea was to get _away_.

Of course, Shura thought. Grim and honest, Shiemi would never leave people to die in her place.

The girl _had_ always been a little bit too idealistic. She probably thought that she could get in the way, try to stop something; all she would end up doing would be getting in trouble all over again. Damsel in distress syndrome, Shura mused. The girl fought it valiantly, but it was still there—Shiemi was always being saved.

"Too bad," Shura murmured mostly to herself.

Her ducklings were dying.

The heat was intense. Her lips blistered, broke and bled into her mouth and she could taste her own blood, the disgusting slide of it down her throat thick and wet and tasting like rust. Slick and warm, she rolled to her side to spit it out before it got to her lungs and made her choke.

Her stomach heaved.

With nothing chilled to press her face against, Shura forced herself not to vomit. The shaking in her palms loosened her grip on Kusanagi, and it slipped from her grasp to dig into the dirt. With nerveless fingers, she pressed her hands into the ground with grit under her nails, and tried to think.

"Rin— _Rin_ —!"

Soft as rose petals and a well-oiled violin caught on the breeze. The words stole through the curtain of fire, like thieves in the night but uncaring of their own well-being.

Shura sighed.

Oh, _Shiemi_.

 _What have you done_?

And the girl ran towards them, tears all down her cheeks. She was red and sobby, and she flinched away from the blue, arms up across her face to ward off the crackle. But the determined tilt to her jaw spoke of something else entirely, and Shura watched Rin's eyes go wide.

The flames pinning Shura to the ground guttered and were extinguished.

He caught the girl on the fly, her tiny body a blur of pale gold and ink and for the shortest of seconds Shura thought that she was going to slit his throat—their gentle little witch, soaked in red—

And then Shura took note of how very possessive demon-boy looked, and how very scared Shiemi was. Like she was worried. Like—

Shura rolled over again, and this time could not keep the vomit in her throat. She emptied the contents of her stomach on the heat-cracked ground and wiped her mouth with back of her hand.

It was revolting.

The acrid taste lingered on her tongue as she looked at the three of them; Yukio with twinned smoking guns pointed down at her ducklings, Rin with a tail curled around her little lost duckling, and her little lost ducking—

(there was a moment of unbelievable incongruity, where the world tilted on its axis)

—with her fingers wound into the fabric of the boy's jacket, all wide sky eyes and gold hair.

So that's how it was, then.

Shura spat once more for good measure.

And then she raised her eyes, lips splitting in a wide smile across her face as she levelled Kusanagi up and at them all. "S'tha's how s'gonna be, Moriyama?"

"Shura-sensei—" Shiemi started, and paused to bite her lip. It looked like she'd almost bitten clean through the skin, worrying her lip past the point of pain. And she deserved it, she knew; she deserved it and so much more.

"Hey, quit that," Rin said in her ear. "You'll hurt yourself."

He tucked her underneath his arm. His tail curled around her, and he met Shura's gaze squarely. Neither moved.

"Shiemi? What are you— _?_!" Bon stared at her, mouth gaping.

She flinched.

"I—I—Ryuji-kun, I…"

And she ducked her head, filling her lungs up with courage and candour, because this was something she had to do. Escape wasn't an option—no, she'd fallen much too far for that. Shiemi barely recognized herself in the mirror anymore; the nose and eyes and hair were familiar, but all in a vague way like maybe she'd seen them in a book once, or on someone in the street.

The girl she was now did not parley with the child she had been. The girl she was now had lost too much.

(A dead best friend and _burn the witch, burn her because she's_ _ **different**_ _and different is_ _ **dangerous**_ and Izumo-chan, I'm so sorry, Izumo-chan, it wasn't supposed to happen like this. It wasn't supposed to be this hard.)

"I can't… go back. I'm sorry," Shiemi said. She twisted her hands into her skirt, and thought of all the things these people had given her; they'd been her family for so long that she wasn't sure if it was even at all possible to live without them.

Because they were everything to her—Bon and Renzou and Koneko and Izumo-chan and Paku-chan, they'd were everything. Because they'd danced together and learned together and grew together; because when they'd been Exwires and still learning, the others were all that any of them had. They had been family and best friends and…

And it hurt to see Bon staring at her like he didn't know who she was.

But two were dead, and that was two more than it ever should have been. Two more than she was prepared to deal with.

And Rin was… Rin was something else entirely.

Bon set his jaw and stared at her, fists clenching into the ground. "Really, huh?"

"Really," she said softly. And this was horrible, because this was hurting him, and Shiemi was not so oblivious not to know what he felt. What he'd always felt, but she hadn't been able to feel it in return. Even in candlelight and silk dresses, when he'd walked her down the stairs and she'd linked arms with her best friends, it had been nothing more than an obligation. She loved him, she did, but not the way she was probably supposed to.

(Maybe that was the problem with feelings. It was almost never the right time.)

"Izumo's _dead_ because of you."

The words were meant to wound, and they did their intended purpose. Shiemi dropped her head. She would not cry.

"I _know_ ," she said.

It was Yukio who spoke next.

"Is this little charade finished?" he asked, each word forced and ice cold. He did not lift his gaze from the men on the ground, but rather cocked the safety; no need to be careful with these ones. Time went on and on unbroken and untouched, bright and clean.

And then movement.

Angel jolted up on some unseen command, lightning-fast and cut-throat dangerous to dice through the three of them. Rin and Yukio jerked back at the same moment, caught off guard for only just a second.

But a second was just a second too much.

" _Herald the heavens, rain thunder across the land_ —!" Shura's voice ripped and broke on the last syllable as she tore the angel-sword from her breast, dragging its white-light glory into the night. Off-balance, hands blistering, she dashed forward.

Rin looked down to find the glowing blade protruding from his chest.

"Well, shit," he said, crumpling over and dropping to his knees.

"Rin?" The panic that clutched at Shiemi's throat rendered her almost mute. She dropped down beside him, knees in the dirt and shameless, too shocked the cry. "Rin!"

Shura dragged the sword back with a gasp; the pain was too much. She dropped it and doubled over, retching. The eerie white glow flickered out. She only barely managed to glance at the others, but Shiemi was screaming and screaming.

"NII-CHAN, _NII-CHAN_ , YOU HAVE TO FIX IT, NII-CHAN—!"

Shiemi's screaming seem to shake Yukio from his stupor. The Greenman spirit roared to life and turned the world to dusky petals, and ice-eyed, he took aim.

The last thing Shiemi registered was the widening of Bon's eyes, a half-shout, and then—

 _Bang_.

Black.

—

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 _tbc_.


	14. KiZUN@

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The chrysanthemums bloomed early, that year.

Bon thought maybe it was a last gift; to wreath the graves of the people he loved in white-yellow blooms from just around the back of the Academy in which they'd all grown up. Chrysanthemums because Shiemi had always loved them and their vibrancy, and rue for Izumo—the purple bitter-herb flowers had been her favourite, and they grew in a wealth along one edge of Shiemi's garden.

He had gone early, the morning of the funeral, to gather what he could. The flowers had already begun to wilt without Shiemi and Nii-chan—it had barely been a month, and things were already starting to die. He touched the flowers, with their cheerful upturned faces, and very nearly wept.

It was a funeral for three, and though they were missing two bodies, it would be better than nothing.

(The Vatican would take care of Angel's funeral; after all, they couldn't have their precious Paladin buried with the _commoners_ now, could they? Especially not when they didn't have the body. Of course not.)

Bon carried armfuls of the flowers back to the Academy; chrysanthemums, rue, weeping blue monkshood, daisies. He brought armfuls of them all, then determinedly went back for more, until the perfume of them had sunk into his hair, and the phantom of her laughter lingered in the back of his mind until his throat was tight and everything was bruised black and blue all over.

But Bon didn't have the time to waste, and he dumped the flowers around the plot of land in the Church graveyard where they were going to bury Izumo—they crumpled, petals creasing sadly underneath his fingers and his shoes. It was a pathetic offering, because they deserved better, but—

Well, it was all he had left to give.

Renzou still wasn't right; likely wouldn't ever be right again, not with the way he still had a bouquet of wilted columbine flowers sitting in a glass cup on his desk. Bon had tried to pull him out of it, but nothing worked. Renzou didn't eat, didn't sleep, didn't anything. He just sat and stared out the window, K'rik at his side, hair washed-out pale pink that was quietly going white while no one was looking.

Grief was different for everyone.

Bon hadn't realized that it would be so terrifying.

The shaking in his fingers never quite went away. His breathing was always a little bit too distraught for normal conversation.

It was killing them both, even if they didn't know it.

The flowers were a lonely touch on a lonely day. Weak autumn sunshine filtered down through the trees. It did not dispel the chill that had long sunk into Bon's bones.

He and Renzou stood in utter silence while the priest talked about the three dead Exorcists. It was a quiet affair; simple.

No one mentioned that Shiemi breathed still.

They bit their lips 'til they bled and the tang of metallic blood would linger in Bon's mouth the rest of the day. Probably the rest of forever, too, but that was still to come, and first he had to forgive himself.

(If that was even possible. Every time he closed his eyes, Konekomaru peeked out from behind Shura-sensei and Izumo crossed her arms and yelled and Shiemi—Jesus Christ, Shiemi—)

The world mourned softly. Shiemi's mother smiled at Bon after the service had ended, but it made no dent in the grief in her eyes. He wondered if she knew at all what had happened. He wondered if she blamed him for her daughter's death.

He wouldn't have blamed her if she did.

The mourners left one by one, until only Renzou, Bon, and Paku remained.

The girl stared at the graves with hard eyes, glinting furious and bright with unshed tears.

"My two best friends," she said, dragging a wet breath of air into her lungs, "are dead. And no one… no one _told_ me."

She whirled and glared at Bon. "Why weren't there bodies, Bon? Izumo—" her voice broke on the name. "I-Izumo-chan's body was here. Why not Koneko-chan and Shiemi-chan? _Why_ _not_?"

Bon couldn't say anything without lying.

Her eyes were brown and small and smoky, and the seething anger hung around her like a blanket. They weren't sky eyes, weren't special; but they were hurt and angry and vengeful and she set her jaw on edge, ready for a fight. She was small with shoulders shaking and Bon had never in his life seen someone more desperate.

"I—I'm—" the words came out on a stutter. Bon couldn't quite get his tongue around them. Didn't want to say it, maybe; didn't want to believe it. "Shiemi…"

"Is still alive, right?" Paku finished the statement for him. Her eyes were suddenly very clear, like maybe she'd known it all along. "She's just… not coming back. I should have known."

" _How_?" Bon asked.

( _How_ did she see what he'd so obviously missed?)

"Oh, Bon," Paku sighed. "She's always wanted…" she stopped, and seemed to choose her next words very carefully. "She always wanted something different. You know?"

But, no.

He didn't know.

Paku smiled, kind but melancholy, and tucked limp strands of brown hair behind her ear. She knew her friends. Izumo wanted adventure. Shiemi wanted… something else. There wasn't really a word for it, but the acrid taste of regret that lingered in the back of Paku's throat was better than any verbal description she ever could have given.

She and Shiemi had never really needed words, anyway. Izumo had been the mouthpiece in their organic little triumvirate; Izumo had been loud and proud and protective. Paku had been the ears, caught between the two worlds, and Shiemi… well, Shiemi had been the eyes.

Sky-eyes, after all.

It didn't surprise Paku at all that Shiemi had ended up somewhere less than satisfactory to the rest of them. The girl was meant for somewhere else.

Maybe Paku had always known that, somewhere in the back of her mind.

Caught in the glow of friendship, they'd all missed so many things.

But she never would have wanted it, anyway.

Paku sighed heavily, and dropped her head down. "I hope she's okay."

Bon looked down at her and her still-shaking frame. He hesitated, and slipped an arm around her to draw her closer. She tucked her face into the center his chest; still too short to reach his throat. He bent down, and breathed in.

Control was a hard thing. Grief was harder.

"Yeah," he said into her hair, determined not to let his voice tremble. "Me, too."

/ / /

"You lose!"

Glee. Utter glee. But it was wary glee, because one did not simply _beat_ Mephistopheles at games whether they were of his design or not; the man simply did not _lose_.

But this time, it seemed he had.

Not his game, indeed.

"A first."

Abaddon rubbed at his stomach, and, slit-eyed, glared at his elder brother through mouse-brown curls. "Not a first. I _told_ you not to bet against them. _You_ didn't listen."

Mephisto inspected his cuticles. "I suppose one could argue that I _did_ win."

"Who are you kidding?" the boy demanded.

"Well," Mephisto began deliberately slow, "I bet that that girl would be the death of them—"

"They're both _still alive_ ," Abaddon interrupted, irate. "That means _you lose_."

"—and she _will_ be. You know that, little brother. So perhaps I was not correct in the argument that I may have won. Perhaps, this bet is still on-going."

Abaddon growled. " _No_. That's not _fair_!"

Mephisto threw his head back and laughed. There was something exhilarated in it, something a little wild and a little dangerous but mostly just amused. "When have I _ever_ played fair?"

"You said you _would_ ," Abaddon pouted, and rubbed at his stomach yet again. "I'm _hungry_!"

The brothers stared at each other, the younger grumbling under his breath, and the elder with the tips of his fingers pressed together and smiling. There was no denying that they would have taken bites of each other's hearts if they could—after all, they would have consumed the world if they could.

They ran on souls, and it was always a pain to transfer them to someone else.

Tiring, too.

In a hamster cage, a little green hamster ran. For a long time, he was the only movement, running and running in circles but never getting anywhere. He squeaked as he ran. The demon princes paid him no mind.

But finally, Mephisto sat back and pressed the back of his hand to his forehead a la Scarlett O'Hara, melodramatic and depressed.

"Fine," he announced. "You _win_."

Abaddon stopped his snivelling. He stretched out his hands, fingers greedy and grasping as an eerie smile split his face. Eyes lit up like lanterns, palms cupped in wait, Abaddon did not breathe.

They hung in suspended animation and the sky smeared unto itself, then cracked open, and the souls danced down. Little balls of white-gold light waltz through the air, swirled around them like snow or maybe feathers, and came to rest in Abaddon's hands.

There was something absolutely marvelous about it.

He smiled down at them all.

They were innumerable; the demon prince stood there all lit up in the combined glow of hundreds and hundreds of lives. Warmth and light and life—they were not things that children of Gehenna often were exposed to, but they hungered for it. How they hungered for it.

"Go on. I know you're hungry, brother dear," Mephisto said, wrinkly his nose delicately.

The boy, glaze-eyed, could only nod. His claws contracted into the souls. Thick gold liquid coursed down between the gaps in his fingers and dipped to the floor.

The souls began to scream.

Abaddon bent his head, opened his mouth, and began to eat. Gold liquid coursed down his chin in rivulets, and he gorged and gorged and gorged.

On the wheel, the little green hamster ran and ran.

/ / /

In a dark, forgotten corner of the universe, the world had ceased to turn.

Shura hung by her wrists from a shadowed ceiling. The clink of chains was loud in her ears. The position was familiar—the stretch in her muscles spoke of something known, because she'd been there before. She knew that place, as much as anyone could know an unknowable corner of the darkened sky.

She knew, and she cringed as his fingers feathered over her bones.

"So lovely," Yukio murmured into the translucent skin of her shoulder.

Shura shuddered when he touched her hips. It was acquiescence, and she wouldn't have said _no_ if she could have.

She'd lost, and they'd both acknowledged that.

The warm slide of blood across her stomach still gave her horrors. The body in the corner had been cooling for ages; though how long it had been so, Shura couldn't have said. The floor was slick beneath her feet, and the gaping wound in the body held nothing. Angel's innards were slung out across the room; the walls were painted with it.

And Shura, too.

Crimson from head to naked toe, dirt on her knees; Yukio had inked a sunrise on her skin with Angel's still-cooling blood, and Shura hadn't made a move to stop him. He'd coloured her with her oldest friend's entrails, and left them on the floor in the dirt after he'd done with them.

She'd watched him tear the blond man's hair out.

Shura hadn't let herself cry.

(Stupid Baldy. Stupid, stupid Baldy.)

Angel was already dead. And her ducklings were dead and—

And there wasn't really a point in trying, anymore, was there?

Yukio's claws tangled through her hair, and he kissed her soft and slow like feathers and rain. There was a lulling gentleness to it. He kissed like her like a well-oil violin on a snowy day—it rippled across her surface and sunk in deep, digging its claws into the farthest parts of her. Even the parts she'd never shared with anyone.

But if Shura was anything, it was a rebel.

And she wouldn't fall as easily as this.

She jerked her knee up fast, vicious, and dug it into his gut. Yukio fell forward with a grunt, nearly toppling them both.

"Fight all you want, love," he murmured. His voice was laced with pain, and something deep inside Shura purred in satisfaction. "It won't get you anywhere."

"It won', won' it?" Shura asked in his ear.

"No," he said.

She thought he was smiling.

And then pain, ripping at the side of her hip as Yukio's claws sliced through flesh. A scream-snarl ripped itself from her throat and it was instinct alone that drove her to bite down against his throat. Hot, wet, horrid—the metal-rust taste of blood washed into her mouth and had bile rising in her throat.

Shura jerked away from his throat just in time to stop herself from vomiting all over.

She'd always hated the taste of blood.

They watched each other. Shura's breathing was erratic, and went even more stilted as Yukio knelt in the filth in front of her. His thumb brushed along the oozing gashes across her hip.

"Oops," he said.

"I _hate_ ya so much," she spit at him.

Yukio pressed his forehead to her thigh. "That is fine. You may hate me all you want. You are _mine_."

The jangle of chains was the only sound while Shura did everything she could to cause him a second's worth of pain. Nothing doing, though. She couldn't force him away, and oh, she hated him so much it made her want to vomit.

Yukio looked up at her, but there was absolutely nothing in his eyes. His glasses worked like a filter, and hid all his thoughts away. She would have spat on his face, but she was above that.

A gypsy woman had told her something, once long ago: that she was forever doomed to be the death of everything she'd ever loved. She'd brushed it off at the time, because it was after Shiro had rescued her from Gehenna, and Shura had been positive that she would never go back to such a dark place.

And she'd had Baldy, after all.

But Yukio had killed everything she loved—even Baldy. Even her self-respect. Even her fight. So the gypsy woman had been right, except for one thing:

The only thing Yukio hadn't killed was himself.

Maybe they could play that game sometime.

(Because there was a sick part of her that still enjoyed this. There was a sick part that knew she deserved no less.)

"If I can't have you," Yukio said, "no one can."

And then he lowered his mouth to the bleeding, and began to lick her blood away.

—

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 _tbc_.


	15. My STAR

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It was very quiet.

The outside world was closed away with a tangle of thick tree trunks, and Shiemi didn't know where in the world they'd disappeared to. She was exhausted, sapped from having Nii-chan spirit them away. She sat in tattered clothes, knees drawn to her chest, and fought not to rock back and forth.

She'd spent hours trying to close the hole in his chest.

His lungs still didn't seem to be quite right, either.

Shiemi wasn't a Doctor. She didn't really know what she was doing.

But Nii-chan did, apparently, so maybe things would be okay. It was a mad world, but Rin's ragged breathing was still sucking and wet like his lungs weren't working properly. It made her think of drowning, kimono clinging to her skin and weighing her down when she'd fallen into the ocean; all she could remember was the sun through water, reaching down as she sunk, and her vision started to go black around the edges—

The memory cut off there in a rush of bubbles and shining light as Izumo-chan dragged her from the water.

It had cemented their friendship and nearly killed her in the process.

(Stupid, really. Maybe she just should have drowned then, and saved everyone the trouble. It would have made a lot more sense, in the long run.)

They were deadly little things that bloomed into something that was quiet and special and precious. And it was ironic that though Izumo had saved her so many times from so many things, the one time she had needed help, Shiemi had been unable to pull through for her.

It was something she was going to regret for the rest of her life.

(Though however long that would be was circumspect.)

She was so tired.

The exhaustion bit at the back of her eyelids, and settled there, itching. Sleep would have been so very easy.

But she needed to know that he was going to wake up.

"Please wake up, Rin. You have to wake up," Shiemi mumbled into his shoulder.

He didn't move at all.

Shiemi finally closed her eyes, too tired to keep stay awake any longer. It had been such a long day, and the wound in Rin's chest was still white with that strange, holy glow. She was so tired that slipping down next to him seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do. She was so tired, she couldn't even think.

At least he was still breathing.

/ / /

Shiemi woke with a start.

And her first thought:

"Rin?"

He groaned.

Something sparked up Shiemi's spine, and she shot up to look down at him. He coughed, rolled over, and spat up blood. It was mottled red and black, sickly colours that made her think of death.

Shiemi's heart clenched.

He coughed again. The sound was low and grating. It scraped across her ears and sunk into her bones; left her fingers cold and shaking, but then, since when had she _not_ been shaking?

"Rin _?_!" she asked again, a little more panicked.

Because he looked like he was dying, and she couldn't help him. Something inside her clicked into place. It was a quiet _click_ , but it was there all the same because this—this was something that had to be. He had to live. He had to.

The branches of their leafy prison seemed to tremble with the waiting and her fear.

Neither of them moved, and they listened to each other breathe.

"Yeah," he said at last. "Shit. I'm alive."

Shiemi drew in a shaky breath. "Yeah. Yeah, you are."

Rin grinned up at her. He didn't say anything—he didn't really need to. They'd been through this all before, but now things were different, because he'd almost just died and she sort of just saved his life.

Shiemi touched his shoulder. "Are you—?"

"M'fine," he said, eyes crinkling up. "Been through worse."

Her heart hurt.

Shiemi breathed out, and lay back down with her head against his chest. The steady _thump_ of his heartbeat was reassuring in that it was so much stronger than when she'd last listened to it. It didn't sound sticky, anymore.

His arms came up and around her, and for a minute, everything was muted to just them.

No more war, for a little while.

She wasn't choking or crying, even though she probably should have been. There was a burning inside her somewhere deep down, and in that quietly burning place, she had no tears left to cry. Her spine had melted from glass to a pale softness, gone slick like warm oil across pavement, and all she wanted was for the world to be normal again. All she wanted was for this to be okay.

And he touched her then, slow and soft and dangerously sweet. Shiemi lowered her lashes as Rin tipped her chin up. His claws brushed across her skin.

The shivers took them both as he kissed her.

Blood and ash on his lips.

She should have been used to it, by then. And somewhere in the mess of their relationship, Shiemi's sanity lay. But it wasn't important, and she could look for it later.

They curled together on that mossy-green floor, Rin's tail twined around them both. Shiemi's world was blue eyes, blue fire; blue forever. And pressed close nose to nose, they simply stared at each other.

"You can breathe better now? It was… you sounded really bad," Shiemi whispered.

The quiet of this sanctuary was not to be disturbed.

"Yeah. Honestly, I've been through worse. This ain't shit," Rin chuckled. His lips parted over his teeth, fangs a sharp glint in the recesses of his mouth, and Shiemi shivered. Losing herself was so easy, here in this house that fear built, and she tipped her head back because her throat belonged to him.

Just like the rest of her, but that wasn't really a question.

"I thought you were going to die," she murmured. The words tumbled from her lips before she could stop them.

"Wouldn't that be a good thing?" Rin asked. "You could go back."

"No," and she knew that it was the truth. She could never go back, never. Too many things had changed, and in the end, she'd probably picked the wrong side.

But that was the thing about hunting monsters.

It changed you.

They lay there together for a long time.

"Nii-chan, could we… go out?"

Her little spirit trilled tiredly.

The thick trunks bent and stretched, and sudden light spilled in. Shiemi had no idea where they were, but she tugged at Rin's wrist and together they crawled out to fresh air and a pink skyline.

Shiemi drew breath in.

Freedom, then.

She turned to look at Rin.

And he was still beautiful; as beautiful as he had been the moment he'd stolen her away from the top of a tree and called her _witch_. He was still dark and electric, and he stood in stark contrast to the lightening sky. The dichotomy of it almost made her smile.

But he did belong here.

And she needed him to understand that. Golden light spilled over them both, turning the world to a dazzling white.

"Look," she said simply. "The sun's rising."

Rin reached for her hand.

"Yeah," he replied, almost breathless. "It is."

Shiemi felt the dazzle of the morning sun on her face, and she smiled.

—

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**_FIN_.**


End file.
